2006




July 12th: Hezbollah's military wing attack two armoured IDF Humvees with anti-tank rockets, killing three soldiers and taking the remaining two in captivity to Lebanon's territory. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon. The world community responds by evacuating foreigh nationals and refusing to call for a ceasefire as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are forced to evacuate their homes and hundreds die.
June 25th, an Israeli soldier is captured by Palestinian militants who attacked an army post in Israel after crossing the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel, Israel responds by invading Gaza and bombing infrastructure.
January 20th: Hamas wins a sweeping victory in the first Palestinian parliamentary elections in a decade. Israel and the United States say they will not deal with a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas.
January 4th: Ariel Sharon suffers a stroke and Ehud Olmert becomes acting Prime Minister of Israel.

2005




August: Israel enagages in a "unlateral pullout" from Gaza (which mainly meant evacuating settlers)
January 9th, Mahmoud Abbas wins the Palestinian elections and is sworn in as President of the Palestinian National Authority

2004




November 10th: Arafat dies after being in a coma and on life-support equipment for the several days.
May: Israel Defense Forces commit massacre in Rafah
On April 17th, Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is assassinated by Israel.
On April 14th, Bush meets with Sharon and they agree on a wall in the West Bank that will make many Israeli settlements permanent.
On March 22nd Israel assassinates Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin.

2000




September 28: Second Intifada Begins. Palestinians riot after Ariel Sharon visits the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque and proclaims the area eternal Israeli territory. The violence escalates rapidly and continues today...

1993




September 13: Oslo Accords. The PLO and Israel agree to mutual recognition. The PLO renounces terrorism, yet the number of new settlements increases and Palestinian groups do not remove their charter goals of destroying Israel.

1987




The First Intifada. An explosion of popular resistance to the Israeli occupation called the Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The PLO signals that it would accept a two state solution in 1988.

1982




June 6: Israel invades Lebanon to fight the PLO. A multinational force lands in Beirut on August 20, 1982 to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. After a demoralizing occupation, Israel slowly withdraws.

1979




March 26: Egypt and Israel sign peace treaty. Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 border with Egypt.

1973




October 6: Yom Kippur War. In a surprise attack, Egypt retakes the Suez canal. Syria reconquers the Golan Heights. Israel succeeds in pushing back the Syrians.

1967




June 5: The Six-Day War. Israel attacks the Egyptians (reconquering the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza), Jordan (conquering the West Bank and Jerusalem), and Syria (conquering the Golan heights).

1964




May: Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) founded, headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria.

1956




October 29: Suez War. Israel invades the Sinai peninsula and occupies it for several months. Israel withdraws after a UN peace keeping force is placed in Sinai.

1949




April 3: Armistice between Israel and Arab states. The war has created over 780,000 Palestinian refugees. Israel has gained about 50% more territory.

1948




May 15: 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Declaration of Israel as the Jewish State. British leave Palestine. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia declare war on Israel.

1936




Arab Revolt. Over 5,000 Arabs are killed, mostly by the British, and several hundred Jews are killed by Arabs

1917




October 2: Promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, the British issue the Balfour Declaration.

Lon live the resistance!

The British had no right to promise any part of Palestine for European Jews, especially after promising the same thing to the Palestinians for their help in fighting the Turks.

Don't know much about history, do you?

Before World War I, the area now known as the "Middle East" was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The French and British defeated the Turks, drove them out of the area, and split it between themselves. The French took what are now Syria and Lebanon - the British took Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula. Two tribal Arabian chieftains were allied with Britain against the Turks and needed to be rewarded: Ibn Saud of the Saudi tribes, and Abdullah and Feisal of the Hashemites. The Saudis got the Arabian peninsula and made it into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Hashemites had to be transplanted for their reward. Feisal was given Iraq . But nothing was left for his cousin Abdullah who had also been promised a kingdom.

In 1917, Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration, a statement expressing Britain's promise for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain the mandate over Palestine, specifically including the requirements of the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Since Biblical times, under the Ottomans and under the British mandate, the country now called "Palestine" always included the area now occupied by Israel (including the "West Bank"), Gaza and Jordan. In order to satisfy the branch of the Hashemites that was left without a kingdom, the British drew a few lines on the map and granted the entire area east of the Jordan River -- close to 80% of mandated Palestine -- as a kingdom to Abdullah. The Jewish homeland, promised in the Balfour Declaration by the same British, was reduced to a mere one-fifth of its original size. Transjordan became independent from Britain in 1946

Yup, that's right.

And Germany's defeat in WWI can be attributed directly to this backroom deal

So in other words ZIONIST POLITICAL MANIACS, including many *German* Jews, sunk a dagger into Germany's back so they could realize their twisted bigot fantasy of stealing Palestine from Palestinians

After the war, as the German people were tortured en masse by the Allies' sadistic war reparations policy (experiencing one of the most horrifying economic meltdowns in history) German political leaders learned of this astonishing treachery by zionist Jewish leaders, many of whom were German citizens, and word of the betrayal spread among the people. So severe had been the collapse of their economy in the 1920s that when the so-called "Great Depression" came along, for Germans it was the light at the end of the tunnel. Prior to WWI Germany had been one of the wealthiest and most progressive societies on earth, far ahead of the United States at the time.

So when the zionist political maniacs around here try to trade on the MORONIC historical fallacy that Nazi Germany's anti-Semitism happened because Germans just simply "went insane" for no particular reason, you need to realize they're just trying to get another one over on you.

History happens for REAL reasons

It's important to notice that while Jews as a whole were blamed and collectively punished, it was the bug-eyed Zionist Maniac subset that caused all the trouble in the first place. With this March 1916 "backroom deal," zionism suddenly went from a relatively innocent movement to the baby-devouring political doomsday cult that we know and love today. First it brought down ruin on the nation of Germany, then as a direct result brought down Germany's homicidal wrath on all the Jews of Europe.

The Holocaust itself is the greatest testament to the idea that these zionist maniacs -- an apocalyptic paranoid "race"-supremacy cult , after all -- are truly the worst enemies the Jews have ever known. Nazi Germanies will rise and fall, but zionism promises to keep generating NEW Nazi Germanies perpetually.

As the paranoid criminal maniacs that they clearly are, the zionists will never admit their role in precipitating horrors like the Holocaust. Instead, and to cancel the possibility of a Jewish backlash, they will continue to manipulate Jews just as amorally as they have everyone else, using the understandable fear of such episodes to seduce other Jews into joining the zionist cult. They run around putting this mind-whammy on other Jews with frantic haste using every trick in their bag because if the reaction seen in Naturei Karta should ever become popular they'd be facing the gallows at Nuremberg themselves. There's a real survival imperative propelling their lunacy

Missing the point of the post- that Jordan is
in essence, "the promised land" to the Palestinians The Jordanians are the real Palestinian Arabs. Over 70% of the 2.8 million population Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs.

I notice that "Zionism = Racism" is continuing to plug David Duke's website, "no war for Israel."

@%<

Yeah, its Hate/Insult, its hate and insult Jews, and then hide the truth. If Arabs are screaming "the Jews are our dogs" on the streets of San Francisco and its reported, who's hating who? Better yet, who's protecting who by hiding it?

TW WRITES: "So in other words ZIONIST POLITICAL MANIACS, including many *German* Jews, sunk a dagger into Germany's back so they could realize their twisted bigot fantasy of stealing Palestine from Palestinians"

BECKY: Wrong. The Zionists LOBBIED the powers that be in Britain to get the Balfour Declaration passed. It was the Allied Powers who imposed the oppressive sanctions on post WWI Germany. Even German Jews protested their harshness.

As for "stealing" Palestine from the "Palestinians." There WERE NO "Palestinians" then. They were called Arabs. They came from Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon as well as a tiny number (less than 0.5 million) of Arabs, Druze, and Bedoin, and Turkish effendi and fellahin.

Israel is NOT on stolen land. It belonged by the spoils of war to the British, who handed it over to the League of Nations who became the United Nations.

The General Assembly of the United Nations established Israel with UN resolution 181.

It is not stolen land, nor did the Zionists displace anyone who lived there.

Oh yeah it is. First the BRITISH stole it from the Ottoman Empire ('spoils of war' my hairy asshole! The British are the biggest bunch of throat-slashing land thieves in all history. It's called "CONQUEST") then they signed over rights to a piece of it to the zio-psycho German collaborators who'd sunk a dagger into their country's back. it's very straightforward. Just because you accepted a gift of stolen land from the party that stole it does not mean it wasn't stolen land

Oh, hey Beck, I figured out your little game. Your conversion to Baha'iism gives you a handy pretext to claim "I'm not Jewish," but what about your family? Are you "of Jewish descent?" What's your maiden name? Since you display so much race bigot psychology, this would be the germane detail, not which religion you're active in. How 'bout it?

TW: Are you "of Jewish descent?"


No anti-Semitism here. Not a bit.

TW WRITES: "First the BRITISH stole it from the Ottoman Empire"

BECKY: So then according to you, it wasn't "Palestinian" land then? It was Turkish land for 400 years.

Of course long before it was Turkish, the ROMANS stole it from the Israelites.

they stole it from the Caananites --who are all dead now.

Israel not only legally owns the land it is on, but has a seat in the United Nations as a member nation.

"Stolen" land my ass!!

If you were truthful (which you are not) you would admit that the West Bank lands are disputed territories where both Arab Muslims and Jews have legitimate claims on the land.

Nor have the Palestinians EVER owned the land they currenlty live on, with the sole exception of Gaza which was ceeded to the PA in Sept 2005.

Why is it bad to post an indirect link to fucking Satan if we have LA IMC allow links to
http://zombietimespuke.chump
?
and get real.

Because, duh, and I'll type this so slow that even a sheepdog can understand it, Zombietime is a right wing site, but David Duke is a right wing _white supremacist_ site owned by one of America's most infamous racists. Even a sheepdog -- if he has decided to be honest that day -- should be able to see _that_ difference.

@%<

nessie the antisemite: "Why is LA Indymedia letting gehrig et al shill for Jewish supremacists? "

Why is nessie running interference for David Duke again? It's like a habit with him.

@%<

For gehrig the @%< liar.

Can you actually back up ANYTHING you say with quotes and non forged URLs?
Haw haw haw

This is like asking if "nessie" still beats his wife.

It's a logical fallacy:

ttp://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/begging.htm

Begging the Question
(petitio principii)

Definition:

The truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises. Often, the conclusion is simply restated in the premises in a slightly different form. In more difficult cases, the premise is a consequence of the conclusion.

Examples:

1. Since I'm not lying, it follows that I'm telling the truth.
2. We know that God exists, since the Bible says God exists. What the Bible says must be true, since God wrote it and God never lies. (Here, we must agree that God exists in order to believe that God wrote the Bible.)

This is like asking gehrig if he's still beating his wife.

It's a logical fallacy:

ttp://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/begging.htm

Begging the Question
(petitio principii)

Definition:

The truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises. Often, the conclusion is simply restated in the premises in a slightly different form. In more difficult cases, the premise is a consequence of the conclusion.

Examples:

1. Since I'm not lying, it follows that I'm telling the truth.
2. We know that Allah exists, since the Qur'an says Allah exists. What the Qur'an says must be true, since Allah dictated it to Gabriel wrote it and Allah never lies. (Here, we must agree that Allah exists in order to believe that the Qur'an is Allah's words.)

Okay, henceforth I will no longer post the NWFI website and …

It is not because I’m yielding to evil Zionist pro-apartheid Israel pressure or because anything on the site is inaccurate but rather to protect the IMC and to ask something in return…If the Israel lobby here is truly anti-apartheid terror and anti-racist then I expect to see them post the websites of these Jewish organizations that are:

TRUE TORAH JEWS
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

NETUREI KARTA
http://www.nkusa.org/

NOT IN MY NAME
http://www.nimn.org/

JEWS NOT ZIONISTS
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/

B'TSELEM - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
http://www.btselem.org/English/index.asp

JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

I just dropped a nuclear bomb on the zionists' entire system of bullshit

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/182259_comment.php#182290

Their deafening silence on this subject is the clearest possible confirmation that it is indeed a doomsday weapon for them. Where's gehrig? Where's Tia? Wheres SJ/CT/Stabber? They're so terrified of stimulating another split second of thought about this that they've been rendered speechless. Them? speechless? What could say it more loudly?

They've retreated into communion with their demon-G-d, desperately praying to It to make this subject just

GO.

AWAY.

Only Becky is setting foot within 50 miles of it, and that's clearly an inane arrogant effort to distract and divert to a less dangerous subject: is Israel "stolen land?" You can even see the panic in her pose. She's desperately trying to provoke me to chase off after her down this snipe trail.

It ain't gonna happen

Hear ye, hear ye, all righteous warriors against the Beast called zionism: THIS is an *extremely* dangerous weapon that they cannot touch

SPREAD THE WORD

No, TW. Sometimes we ignore you because you are just plain nuts. And you lie.

Your comment "its the Jews own fault for the Holocaust"- simply deserves to be ignored. As do you. Generally.

Oh, no kidding, poor TInk's saying the Holocaust was the Jews' own fault.

Funny, Hitler said the same thing.

But it's not like an antisemitic outburst is something new and unusual for him. He rants and rips and spews antisemitic hate like a Klansman on crack and then wonders why nobody takes him seriously.

@%<

Look, angry David Duke groupie, we've got nothing to prove to someone with bonafide racist supremacist credentials like you. Now If the you are truly anti-apartheid, anti-terror and anti-racist then I expect to see you post from the following truth promoting website, for starters:

http://palestinefacts.org

And I expect you to routinely post articles denouncing and exposing the apartheid, terror and racism in the PA, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.

You took sides in a conflict you're no part of by choosing the anti-peace, anti-progress side with whom your mentor just oh so conveniently happens to sympathize and share the same scabrous Jew hatred and you need to show us you've shifted to a balanced vantage point.

Dismissed.

The history of "Palestine" would be considerably easier to accurately chronicle if it had ever actually physically existed as a bona fide country

This is true. Can't help but wonder what Israel is "occupying" since there was never a Palestine, and Gaza was acquired from Egypt, and Judea and Samaria from Jordan.

If Palestine was a real country, where were its borders? What was its currency? Who was its first president?

Take for example this:

"Arab Revolt. Over 5,000 Arabs are killed, mostly by the British, and several hundred Jews are killed by Arabs "

You'd think the Arabs weren't the ones that perpetrated this murder campaign on the Jews and were then subdued by the British. None of the Arab massacres of Jews in mentioned there.

This article would be more aptly entitled A Brief History of the Holy Land From a pro-Palestinian Point of View.

This was discussed in great detail in Wiliam Ziff's 1938 "Rape of Palestine". While the Arabs were slaughtering their Jewish neighbors in the 1926 Arab riots, they screamed two things, "Kill the Jews' and "The government is with us". The Arabs were shocked when some of them were arrested for killing Jews as they thought (and had been lead to believe by the British military) they and the British were allied against their common enemy, the Jews!

The British report to the League of Nations (1936-7)

"There were similar assaults [by the Arabs] on the persons and property of the Jews, conducted with the same reckless ferocity. Women and children were not spared... In 1936 this was still clearer. Jewish lives were taken and Jewish property destroyed... The word 'disturbances' gives a misleading impression of what happened. It was an open rebellion of the Palestinian Arabs, assisted by fellow Arabs from other countries, against British Mandatory rule. Throughout the strike the Arab press indulged in unrestrained invective against the [British] Government. The Government imprisons and demolishes [houses] and imposes extortionate fines in the interests of imperialism."

The British report to the League of Nations had no problem using the 'T' word or acknowledging the sustaining character of political violence in Palestinian Arab culture - internal and external, noting:

"The ugliest element in the picture remains to be noted. Arab nationalism in Palestine has not escaped infection with the foul disease which has so often defiled the cause of nationalism in other lands. Acts of 'terrorism' in various parts of the country have long been only too familiar reading in the news-papers. As in Ireland in the worst days after the War or in Bengal, intimidation at the point of a revolver has become a not infrequent feature of Arab politics. Attacks by Arabs on Jews, unhappily, are no new thing. The novelty in the present situation is attacks by Arabs on Arabs. For an Arab to be suspected of a lukewarm adherence to the nationalist cause is to invite a visit from a body of 'gunmen.'"

The British report to the League of Nations noted the destructive role of Palestinian Arab leadership at the time:

"If anything is said in public or done in daylight against the known desires of the Arab Higher Committee, it is the work not of a more moderate, but a more full-blooded nationalism than theirs [AHC]."

The British report to the League of Nations noted the hate that fueled Palestinian Arab political culture:

"...in Palestine Arab nationalism is inextricably interwoven with antagonism to the Jews... That is why it is difficult to be an Arab patriot and not to hate the Jews."

"....we [The British] find ourselves reluctantly convinced that no prospect of a lasting settlement can be founded on moderate Arab nationalism. At every successive crisis in the past that hope has been entertained. In each case it has proved illusory."

Tee Wdumbya:
"I said the ZIONIST WHACKO Jews were PARTLY to blame... My assignment of blame is quite even-handed. "

And you think any of us care for the insane+inane distinction you've just made? None of us do. We despise you even more for it.


Tee Wdumbya:
"Did he really? Or is this just another of your grotesque nattering-rat word games? If he said the same thing *I* said (versus what you twisted my words into meaning) then maybe it's true. Just because Hitler said a thing doesn't automatically make it untrue. "

Your affection for Hitler oozes out of this remark. You're busted. You tried to walk a tightrope and flunked in the most spectacular manner.

MESSAGE TO TW: Why don't you share first, TW?
Let us all know who your parents are/were, where you grew up, and what religious instruction you've had/been subjected to?

We are all ears.
Your life is so much more interesting than mine.

"Your affection for Hitler oozes out of this remark."

Au contraire, zio-douche, I think Hitler and everyone licking his ass were the lowest form of human filth in history -- right up there with present-day Americans and zionists.

If I had been German in WWII, Hitler would have killed me

***YOU***

are the ones cozyin right up to Hitler's present-day incarnation, George Dubya Bush, gotcher mouth around the head of his dick slurpin his jizz right down. Your most highly placed agents are all in his choir. In fact he IS your supreme agent! The billionaires at the pinnacle of your class/political/power-ecology camp, they *OWN* him. That's why EVERY foreign policy decision he makes fits your interests perfectly. Here all this time he's been trying to convice the sheeple that IRAN'S about to have the bomb, and who does it turn out to be?

THEY FUCKING KNEW THAT! This was no surprise!

But freaking people out about *North_Korea* has NOTHING to do with step'n'fetch-it Dubya's job description! His purpose as president / #1 public figurehead is to whip the goy cows up to fight who YOU want them to fight!

You should have asked me BEFORE I asked you

BUT YOU DIDN'T

speak for yourself - I'm following the discussion and you don't see me raising any objections on what TW's saying

None of my ilk, that is.

Britts offering Palestinian lands for a Jewish state is no less of an offense than Nazis giving Slovakian lands to thier Hungarian pals. And like the Hungarian buddies of Hitler, Zionists didn't have to invade palestine. They chose to invade.

the Balfour declaration was a declaration of WAR.

Palestinians didn't have a "state". Wow. And so what? How would not having thier own independant state, with a flag and a currency, denigrate the palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by Zionist invadors and thier Judeo-christian (small c) enablers?

In 1947, there were only 55 member states in the UN. Only 33 states ( diplomats, no referendum in ANY of those states, all judeo-christuian ) voted to "creat" "Iseal" out of Palestinian lands. 33 diplomats (probalby not unlike the guy Bush sent to the UN) chose to draw a line across a map of Palestine and gave Zionists thier blessings for Zionists to be murderous thieves of Palestinian lands. 33 states is 1/6 of the current member states, but we hear about some "world community" creating "Israel". Right, well who else's homeland would today's 6 times as big UN have to be giving to Zionists??? Does today's 6 times as big UN have a right to give Southern California to Zionists???

Palestinians are not Arabs. After Arab Muslims drove the east roman byzantine empire out of Palestine, the Arab Muslims left. we know that because they then kicked the east roman empire out of lebanon, and syria, etc. It then took 200 years for the locals to adopt Arabic as thier own language. And the ONLY Arabs who need to learn how to speek Arabic are babies.

genetics has shown that Palestinians are geneticly distinct from Arabs, who only seem to be found in Saudi Arabia. About 50% of Palestinians share the Cohen model halotype Y - chromosom, which some have labled "the Jews gene" because it was thought that only Jews had it. And the other 50% of palestinians are female and do not have a y-chromosom. And the only way that could have happened is if Palestinians are descended from Canaanite slave girls raped by hebrew occupiers of the land or that they are the "lost tribes of Israel" who, propheticly, would return with sleep in thier eyes and knowing not of thier past".

Jesus boy Simon was a Canaanite. there were many others. Judeans were only 1 clan living in the land. How about the Samaritans, who still live in the land? Romans only kicked Judeans out of the land that hebrews invadors slaughtered or enslaved the locals to rule. Canaanite folks stayed. Romans just ruled them as they ruled Sumaritans who were also in the land.

That should be enough for a start.

How did the Zionists acquire land in Palestine?
Note: Land in Israel is often measured in hectares (1 acre = approx. 0.4 hectare, 1 hectare = approx. 2.5 acres) or dunams (dunam = approx. .25 acre, acre = approx. 4 dunams). There are 640 acres in a square mile. See Conversion for more information.


Redemption of land in Eretz Israel, much of which had fallen into neglect under foreign rule, began in the mid-1850s with the first attempts to enable Jews to live productively in Ottoman Palestine without reliance on the "old yishuv" model of overseas support. Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) made the first known land purchase by someone from outside the region in 1855: 10 hectares (250 acres) of orange groves in Jaffa, under a newly-made arrangement with the Sultan allowing these first-ever purchases. Other private acquisitions followed, and by 1882, some 2,200 hectares had been purchased by Jews. Although several of the first Zionist villages (moshavot) were built on this land, the areas were not contiguous and the idea of using land purchase to prepare for Jewish sovereignty was far in the future. Each purchase entailed a cumbersome bureaucratic procedure vis-à-vis the local Turkish authorities, which, in the final declining phase of the Ottoman Empire, were either hostile to or uninterested in Jewish holdings in the sparsely populated backwater province that Palestine had become. Nearly all land was owned by the state (and was passed on to subsequent sovereigns) or by private and public entities through title or leasing arrangements. This state of affairs, coupled with the frequent need to resort to bribery in official dealings, gave the Jewish purchases a clandestine complexion that would recur in subsequent years.

Although the creation of the Jewish National Fund was originally proposed by Judah Alkalai in 1847 it had to wait until the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1901 to become a reality. The Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeYisrael) was established to buy land in Palestine for reclamation and Jewish settlement. In its first decade, the JNF built a worldwide fundraising organization based on sale of stamps, collection "Blue Boxes" in homes and schools and solicitation of donations. In the spring of 1903, JNF acquired its first parcel of land: 800 acres in Hadera. Other modest purchases were made in 1904 and 1908 in Lower Galilee, Judea, and the Lake Kinneret region, and two forms of settlement that would prove crucial in the land-acquisition enterprise were pioneered there: the cooperative (moshav) and the collective (kevutsa, later kibbutz).

From the start, the organization focused on greening the land through the planting of trees. JNF got involved in tree planting for many reasons, including as a way to fulfill the Biblical commandment. In order to solidify ownership of land purchased by JNF on behalf of the Jewish community, and in accordance with prevailing laws of the day, trees were planted whenever a new piece of land was purchased. In 1908, the first JNF trees were planted at Hulda: olive trees in memory of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. In 1920, JNF expanded its role to help reclaim the swamps of Palestine. There quickly followed afforestation efforts. Since 1920, millions of trees have been planted in Israel by the Jewish National Fund.

Baron Benjamin (Edmond James) de Rothschild (1845-1934) enlisted in this cause after being petitioned by the leaders of Rishon Lezion, one of the First Aliya villages. His patronage embraced 12 settlements at all three levels of land redemption: purchase, reclamation and economically viable settlement. To make these possible, he established an administration that, although staffed in part by condescending officials who evoked the independent-minded settlers' resentment, institutionalized all three aspects of land redemption. The best-known settlements sponsored by Rothschild are Metulla, Zikhron Ya'akov, Rishon Lezion, and Rosh Pina. Metulla (est. 1896) is an example of a purchase that had the further advantages of controlling water sources and establishing the northern limit of Jewish settlement. In 1900, Rothschild transferred the settlements, their agricultural enterprises, and 25,000 hectares of land to the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA, est. 1891), which he continued to support in various ways.

In a military biography of Moshe Dayan, the early Zionist activity is described this way:

"Using Rothschild's money, these Jews purchased land from absentee Turkish landlords. To the Arab tenant farmers, the transfer of land from Turkish to Jewish ownership was of little consequence since the Jews rehired them as agricultural workers."
By the time Israel became a state in 1948, JNF owned 12.5 percent of all the land of Israel on which 80 percent of Israel's population now lives. With this ownership came the responsibility of transforming the land into a beautiful and fertile area that would be a suitable home for the new state.

Personal experiences with the difficulties and triumphs of land acquisition in the Emek Jezreel valley of Israel in the period from 1891 to the 1920s are documented in great detail in this memoir published in 1929. Interesting passages include:

"It was not only the fertility of these plains [Emek Jezreel] that attracted the [sic], but also the fact that these were the only regions where it was possible to purchase a large stretch of land from a single owner, while the remainder of Palestine was broken up into small parcels belonging to many individuals..."


"[It was not easy for Hankin] to reach this agreement to a low price, for even then [1891] speculators of all kinds were surrounding the land owners and attempting to frustrate his efforts by offering a higher price. But Hankin enjoyed the confidence of the Arabs, so that he succeeded in overcoming the competition of the speculators."


"...The Turkish Government refused to authorize the sale, even though official permission was applied for ... by a Jew, Efraim Krause, who was a Turkish citizen."


"In 1921 it was impossible to find a Jewish purchaser for one of the finest and best situated orange plantations in Palestine (although it was offered at an exceedingly low price), so that it had to be sold to an Arab."
Shlomo Gravetz of the Jewish National Fund says: "Throughout the history of land reclamation by Jews in Eretz Yisrael, the Arabs have always claimed that the Jews were throwing them off their land. In 1932 the High Commissioner appointed the Bentwich Committee to investigate these claims, and out of 700 purchases of Arab property, the committee did not find one case in which the Jews had acted immorally."

http://palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_zionists_land.php


What was the impact of the Zionists on Palestine?

In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a litany of Christian travelers - Siebald Rieter and Johann Tucker, Arnold Van Harff and Father Michael Nuad, Martin Kabatnik and Felix Fabri, Count Constantine Francois Volney and Alphonse de Lamartine, Mark Twain and Sir George Gawler, Sir George Adam Smith and Edward Robinson - found Palestine virtually empty, except for Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Safed, Shechem, Hebron, Gaza, Ramleh, Acre, Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Irsuf, Caesarea, and El Arish, and throughout Galilee towns - Kfar Alma, Ein Zeitim, Biria, Pekiin, Kfar Hanania, Kfar Kana and Kfar Yassif. To stay, these Jews had submitted to innumerable conquerors, taxes, pogroms and degradation. But they stayed. In 1799, Palestine was still so much in need of people that Napoleon Bonaparte championed a full-scale return of Jews.

In the early 19th century, Palestine was a backward, neglected province of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins.

In Jerusalem, all reports and journals of travelers, pilgrims and government representatives during these years, repeatedly record the poverty, filth and neglect and the desolate nature of the countryside. Early photographs show lepers in rags and dilapidated buildings. Jerusalem was surrounded by marauding bands of Bedouin Arabs and had to close her gates at nightfall and reopen them at first light, a practice that was similar in Biblical times.

Some quotes from the writings of these visitors before modern times:

Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. [English pilgrim in 1590]


The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population. [British consul in 1857]


There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. ... For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn ... Jericho lies a moldering ruin ... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country ... Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely ... [Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867]
Remarkably, there are photographs dating to the 19th century and early 20th century that document the development of Palestine from the desolate, pre-Zionist landscape reported by travelers to the green and productive land that Jewish immigrants created there. This web site has 460 photographs and lithographs of the period, some never before available to the public. They show how the industrious Zionists made the lightly-populated land productive and able to support the great increases in Jewish and Arab numbers that came to Palestine in the following decades.

Winston Churchill was British Colonial Secretary when he visited the Middle East in the winter of 1920-1921. Anti-Semitic elements in the British government tried to assert that the Jews were not needed to develop Palestine. Churchill replied:

Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea."
In 1924, a few months after becoming Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Elwood Mead (namesake of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam) published a highly favorable review of Jewish settlements in Palestine based on his visits there in 1923. His article, "New Palestine," praised the Zionists accomplishments and plans, a publicity coup. Mead blamed Islam, Ottoman governance, and Arab culture for the demise of Roman irrigation systems that, according to Mead, once supported "lands flowing with milk and honey." Mead was a consultant to Chiam Weizman offering his expertise to maximize the return on investment of the extensive investments in irrigation, land reclamation, and water supplies in the Zionist areas based on Mead's extensive experience in the American West.

After the Arab riots in 1929, Mead wrote to the British High Commissioner that Jewish colonists had produced "a marvelous transformation" in the Palestinian landscape. Mead noted that in his visits to Palestine he had seen nothing "to indicate that the Arab was injured." Moreover, the Jewish example of "what modern finance and equipment can do, coupled with the sympathetic interest of the government is bringing him out of the hopeless inertia that misgovernment and oppression of centuries past have created .... " Jewish settlers in Palestine were not only reclaiming the land, they were elevating living standards for the Arab population and assisting the British government.

In his report to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for the year 1925, the British High Commissioner wrote:

Fuel-power stations for the generation of electrical light and energy have been established at Haifa and Tiberias by the [Jewish] Palestine Electric Corporation, Limited. This increase in commercial activity, in building enterprise and new industrial developments is due almost entirely to Jewish capital and the entry during the year of an immigrant class with money to invest.
During this period a significant shift of population took place as Arabs and others from all over the Middle East moved to the areas of Zionist cultivation and development. The organizational and technical skills of the Jewish settlers, their access to outside capital, and their sheer hard work created an economic boom that created opportunity for Arab workers, particularly in contrast to the stagnant conditions elsewhere in the region. This has been documented by many, following the much-criticized but basically sound work of Joan Peters in her book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. The central findings are that:

As far back as 1893, the Jews not only were already far from being a small minority in the areas where they had settled, but were the largest single group there (if one divides the non-Jewish population into Muslim and Christian), and


Substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century; from 1893 to 1947 while the Palestinian Arab population slightly more than doubled in areas where no Jews were settled, it quintupled in the main areas of Jewish settlement.
These findings are supported with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer.

http://palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_zionists_impact.php


BTW, you still haven't pointed to any reliable sources to back up your contention that all Palestinian males carry the Cohen Modal Haplotype. I'm sure you'll default on backing up this hilarious claim here too. LMGDFAO

talk about a flaming zealot.
'Redemption of land in Eretz Israel, much of which had fallen into neglect under foreign rule'


Is redemption some new babble word for immigration?
Hey toraboy, your 'chosen ones' racism is showing again.

Zionists did buy land. And they turned the land they did buy into beachhead kibbutzes. In 1948, Zionists broke out of thier beachhead kibbutzes and became murderous thieves of the rest.

if you were to buy the land next to a bank, and used that land to tunnel into the banks vault, when you get out of prison (because your action would be an offense), would you still own the land you legaly bought? OR would the bank's insurance company take you to court and legaly use YOUR land to repair the damage you did to the vault? And what if a bank guard were killed in your offense, like many Palestinians were killed in the ZIonist's theft of palestinian lands. the Zionists who bought land and then used that property as a beachhead to become murderous thieves of palestinian lands wouldn't even retain the land they legaly bought under the laws we demand for our own protection. But get this, the ZIonist laws, which they have chosen for thier own protection agree with our laws. Under the laws of the ZIonist crusader states, the ZIonists who used thier lands as a beachhead in the murderous theft of other Palestinian lands wouldn't even have a right to the lands they legaly bought. And Zionists can not honestly say they are something other than murderous thieves of palestinian lands when under Zionist law, Zionists are murderous thieves.

We're discussing land tracts that belonged to Jews, then were usurped by Roman and an entire medley of foreign occupiers up until the Jordanians and Egyptians that dispossessed the untermenschen Jews in mid last century. Redemption is affirmative action if anything. In practical terms it's active pursuit of justice.

Meanwhile, some of your oh so benevolent uebermensch are squatting on usurped Jewish territory in East Jerusalem, e.g. the Old City's Muslim Quarter which was teeming with Jews prior to 1949.

Your boundless stupidity burst through.

Who started the War of Independence?

The first large-scale assaults began on January 9, 1948, when approximately 1,000 Arabs attacked Jewish communities in northern Palestine. By February, the British said so many Arabs had infiltrated they lacked the forces to run them back. In fact, the British turned over bases and arms to Arab irregulars and the Arab Legion.

Early in the war, from November 29, 1947 until April 1, 1948, the Palestinian Arabs took the offensive, with help from volunteers from neighboring countries. The Jews suffered severe casualties and passage along most of their major roadways was disrupted. Starting in April 1948, the Haganah took the initiative, and in six weeks was able to turn the tables by capturing the Arab sections of Tiberias, Haifa and later also Safed and Acre. They temporarily opened the road to Jerusalem and gained control of much of the territory alotted to the Jewish State under the UN Resolution.

From mid-May to mid-July, the critical phase of the war, came the simultaneous, coordinated assault on the new State of Israel by five regular Arab armies from neighboring countries (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq), with an overwhelming superiority of heavy equipment - armor, artillery and airforce. From then through the negotiated agreements that ended the war in 1949, Israel not only ejected the invading Arab forces, it also captured and held some 5,000 sq. km. over and above the areas allocated to it by the United Nations.

On April 26, 1948, Transjordan's King Abdullah said:

[A]ll our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine problem have failed. The only way left for us is war. I will have the pleasure and honor to save Palestine.
On May 4, 1948, the Arab Legion attacked Kfar Etzion. The defenders drove them back, but the Legion returned a week later. After two days, the ill-equipped and outnumbered settlers were overwhelmed. Many defenders were massacred by the Arabs after they had surrendered.

The UN blamed the Arabs for the violence. The UN Palestine Commission was never permitted by the Arabs or British to go to Palestine to implement the resolution. On February 16, 1948, the Commission reported to the Security Council:

Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein.
The Arabs were blunt in taking responsibility for starting the war. Jamal Husseini told the Security Council on April 16, 1948:

The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.
The British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:

Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman... They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.
On May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion read Israel's Proclamation of Independence in Tel Aviv. It included these paragraphs:

We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the building-up of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and representation in all its ... institutions.

We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and goodwill, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.
The Arabs, inside and outside the territory defined for the State of Israel, gave no consideration to these offers of peace or the many other attempts to negotiate a settlement. Immediately following the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 and the departure of the British the next day, the five Arab armies invaded Israel. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League:

This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.


What about Arab atrocities against Jews?

Violence by Arabs against the Jewish civilian population of Palestine was a periodic reality. During the Mandate period, whenever Arab dissatisfaction reached a peak, or when anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic Arab leaders needed to provoke the British authorities, rioting and Jewish casualties were created. Major rioting flared in Palestine during 1920-21, in 1929, and during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. This was not so different from the experience of Jews all over Europe and was part of the motivation for creating a Jewish state where Jews could control their own security.

The day after the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947, violence against Jewish civilians began to escalate. The Arabs declared a protest strike and instigated riots that claimed the lives of 62 Jews and 32 Arabs. By the end of the second week, 93 Arabs, 84 Jews and 7 Englishmen had been killed and scores injured. From November 30, 1947 to February 1, 1948 427 Arabs, 381 Jews and 46 British were killed and 1,035 Arabs, 725 Jews and 135 British were wounded. In March alone, 271 Jews and 257 Arabs died in Arab attacks and Jewish counter­attacks. These were not military operations, but terrorism against civilian targets intended to achieve political aims for the Arabs who were dissatisfied with the United Nations partition plan.

In February 1948 there was a bombing on the 1st in Jerusalem against the Palestine Post building (later renamed the The Jerusalem Post) which killed six people and injured dozens. Then on February 22nd, three booby-trapped trucks positioned in Ben-Yehuda Street exploded, destroying four large buildings, killing 50 and injuring more than 100. On March 11, a car bomb exploded in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency building, killing 12 people, injuring 44, and causing extensive damage.

Arab acts of hostility prior to statehood reached their peak in March. Arabs controlled all the inter-urban routes. The road to Jerusalem was blocked, settlements in the Galilee and the Negev were also cut off and daily attacks were perpetrated on convoys. In the four months after the UN resolution, some 850 Jews were killed throughout the country, most of them in Jerusalem or on the road to the city.

On April 13, 1948, Arabs set mines in the road in the Sheik Jarrah area to block a convoy of 10 vehicles -- trucks, buses and ambulances -- carrying supplies, nurses, doctors, scientists, and patients to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. In the attack, 78 were killed and their bodies mutilated. Dozens are wounded. British soldiers delayed intervention in the attack for 6 hours while the killing continued. The hospital was cut off from Israel until it was recovered after the Six Day War in June 1967.

The largest Arab atrocity of the war was on May 13, 1948, the massacre of dozens of surrendering defenders, including some twenty women, at Kfar Etzion in the Etzion Bloc of settlements (Gush Etzion) just north of Hebron, in the territory allocated to the Arabs under the UN partition plan. The Etzion Bloc had already seen a massacre in January 1947 when a Haganah platoon of 35 soldiers sent to help them with medical supplies and ammunition was massacred by hundreds of Arab militants. Their stripped, mutilated bodies were found the next day by a British patrol.

The final battle for Gush Etzion took place between May 12-14, 1948. Massive, heavily armed enemy forces overran the Jewish positions. A handful of exhausted defenders, equipped only with light arms and very little ammunition could not withstand the attacking forces. On Thursday, May 13th, Kfar Etzion fell, its defenders killed, most of them slaughtered by Arab rioters after the collapse of the defense. Gush Etzion was destroyed in the aftermath -- everything of value was removed, then the buildings were reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of trees in the orchards -- individually planted by the Jewish farmers -- were uprooted.

What happened at Dir Yassin?
Dir Yassin was certainly not a massacre of a peaceful village, but rather was an Arab-Jewish battle with unfortunate civilian casualties.

Dir Yassin lies on a hill west of Jerusalem, eight hundred meters above sea level, and 700 meters from the Jewish neighbourhood of Givat Shaul. The Dir Yassin fortified position overlooked the westerly Jewish neighborhoods: Givat Shaul, Bet Hakerem, Yefe Nof, and the road to Bayit Vagan. The village also overlooked the section of road linking Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv. Dir Yassin served as a halfway site for forces moving up from the Arab villages of Ein Karem and Malha in the south to Kastel and Kolonia, which overlooked the main Jerusalem - Tel Aviv road.

On April 2, 1948, the Arab inhabitants of Dir Yassin began sniping at the Jewish Quarters of Bet Hakerem and Yefe Nof. According to reports by the Shai (Haganah Intelligence), fortifications were being constructed in the village and a large quantity of arms being stockpiled. Several days before the attack on Dir Yassin, the presence of foreign fighters was reported, including Iraqi soldiers and irregular forces. An Arab research study conducted at Bir Zeit University (near Ramallah) relates that the men of Dir Yassin took an active part in violent acts against Jewish targets and that many of the men of the village fought in the battle for Kastel, together with Abd-el-Kadr el-Husseini. The report also stated that trenches had been dug at the entry to the village, and that more than 100 men had been trained and equipped with rifles and Bren guns. A local guard force had been set up and 40 inhabitants guarded the village every night.

On April 6, 1948, Operation Nachshon was launched by the Haganah with the aim of opening up the road to Jerusalem. The Palmach was part of this effort together with the Irgun (under Menachem Begin) and Lehi forces, their first combined operation. On Thursday, April 8, 1948 they launched an attack on Dir Yassin between 4 and 5 AM. A loudspeaker mounted on an armored car warned the Arabs and asked them to evacuate their women and children. Hundreds left, but hundreds stayed. A pitched battle ensued, and when the smoke cleared, 110 to 120 Arabs were killed, 40 Jews were seriously injured and four Jews were dead. The number killed has been confirmed even by Palestinian Arab researchers, such as Bir Zeit University professor Sharif Kanaana who puts the number no higher than 120 (although he clings to the claim of massacre). Another contemporary Arab source deflates the number killed to less than 100, stating, after a count, "that there were no more than 46 corpses". The head of the coroner unit, professor Yehoshua Arieli, testified that the number was 110.

The use of the loudsepaker to warn the civilians to evacuate is a key point, certainly not the action of soldiers planning to murder the population. The loudspeaker is not in dispute. A publication of the Arab League titled Israeli Aggression states:

On the night of April 9, 1948, the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin was surprised by a loudspeaker, which called on the population to evacuate it immediately.
The village was not peaceful, but the essential part of this quote agrees with Jewish accounts.

The massacre claim, meaning the killing of defenceless people, has long since been discredited by the Israeli government and every other historical study. The story persists because pro-Arab sources constantly repeat it, often inflating the number of dead to 250 or more. There are completely fictional accounts written about Arabs being marched to the mosque and shot against the walls, or even worse stories of torture, rape or any other shocking aspect the storyteller invents. As an example, here is how one Arab website describes the scene:

[The Jews used] machine guns, then grenades and finished of with knives. Women's bellies were cut open and babies were butchered in the hands of their helpless mothers. Around 250 people were murdered in cold blood. Of them 25 pregnant women were bayoneted in the abdomen while still alive. 52 children were maimed under the eyes of their own mothers, and they were slain and their heads cut off.
To say there is not a shread of evidence for these embellishments is giving them too much credit.

On the contrary, there are eyewitness accounts from the time, Jewish and Arab, that tell the story as it happened. For example, according to the Daily Telegraph, April 8, 1998, Ayish Zeidan, a resident of the village and a survivor of the fighting there, stated:

The Arab radio talked of women being killed and raped, but this is not true... I believe that most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters. The Arab leaders committed a big mistake. By exaggerating the atrocities they thought they would encourage people to fight back harder. Instead they created panic and people ran away.
Dir Yassin was a reasonable military target for Jewish forces, there was warning given before the battle, a fierce battle was fought with casualties on both sides. No massacre, no mutiliations, no atrocities.

Palestinian Arab eyewitnesses have recently admitted that some of their claims about Dir Yassin were deliberate fabrications. The issue of the Jerusalem Report dated April 2, 1998 describes a BBC television program in which Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, admits that he was told by Hussein Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate claims of atrocities at Dir Yassin in order to encourage Arab regimes to invade the expected Jewish state.

According to the Jerusalem Report:

Nusseibeh "describes an encounter at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi... 'I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story,' recalled Nusseibeh. 'He said, "We must make the most of this." So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.' "
The BBC program then shows a recent interview with Abu Mahmud, who was a Dir Yassin resident in 1948, who says:

... the villagers protested against the atrocity claims: We said, "There was no rape." [Khalidi] said, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews."
Khalidi was one of the originators of the "massacre" allegation in 1948. It was Khalidi's claims about Jewish atrocities in Dir Yassin that were the basis for an article in the New York Times by its correspondent, Dana Schmidt (on April 12, 1948), claiming a massacre took place. The Times article has been widely reprinted and cited as "proof" of the massacre throughout the past 50 years.

Nusseibeh, who is a member of one of Jerusalem's most prominent Arab families and presently lives in Amman, told the BBC that the fabricated atrocity stories about Dir Yassin were:

"...our biggest mistake," because "Palestinians fled in terror" and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity claims.
It has also been alleged that the Dir Yassin hoax was supported by the left-wing political party of David Ben-Gurion in order to smear the right-wing, the Irgun and its commander Menachem Begin.


Why did Arabs leave the new State of Israel?
The vexing question of the "Palestinian Refugees" is one of the perennial open sores of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-48 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. Tragically, had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN resolution, not a single Palestinian would have become a refugee and an independent Arab state would now exist beside Israel.

There are now claims from Arab sources that millions of Palestinians were pushed off their land by the Zionists, then expelled by the new State of Israel in the War of Independence in 1948, followed by similar Israeli policies that continue today. What is the truth of these claims?

The Palestinian tragedy is primarily self-inflicted, a direct result of the vehement Palestinian Arab rejection of the United Nations resolution of November 29, 1947 calling for the establishment of two states in Palestine, and the violent attempt by the Arab nations of the region to abort the Jewish state at birth. Palestinian Arabs have tried to rewrite the history of the 1948 war in a manner that stains Israel politically and morally. Their objective is to 1) extract from Israel a confession of the allegedly forcible dispossession of "native Palestinians" by "an act of expulsion," and then 2) to ensure the return of refugees to parts of the territory that is now Israel and/or to compensate the Palestinian Arabs monetarily for their sufferings.

But this cannot actually happen, however fervently Arabs may believe in it, because historical fact is not what they claim. Arabs left Israel in 1948 in large numbers, it is true, but not for the reasons that Palestinian Arabs put forth. Fortunately for history, during the past decade Israeli and other state archives have declassified millions of records, including invaluable contemporary Arab and Palestinian documents, relating to the 1948 war and the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. These make it possible to establish the truth about what happened in Palestine.

A good example is events of the War of Independence period in the city of Haifa. When hostilities between Arabs and Jews broke out in 1947, there were 62,500 Arabs in Haifa; by May 1948, all but a few were gone, accounting for fully a tenth of the total Palestinian dispersion.

The first thing the documents show is that Arab flight from Haifa began well before the outbreak of hostilities, and even before the UN’s November 29, 1947 partition resolution. On October 23, over a month earlier, a British intelligence brief was already noting that:

... leading Arab personalities are acting on the assumption that disturbances are near at hand, and have already evacuated their families to neighboring Arab countries.
By November 21, as the General Assembly was getting ready to vote, not just "leading Arab personalities" but "many Arabs of Haifa" were reported to be removing their families. And as the violent Arab reaction to the UN resolution built up, eradicating any hope of its peaceful enforcement, this stream of refugees turned into a flood. Thus it was that, by mid-December 1947, some 15,000-20,000 people, almost a third of the city’s Arab population, had fled, creating severe economic adversity for those remaining who found essential services disrupted, causing both unemployment and shortages in basic necessities. As 1948 wore on, looting, infighting between rival Arab groups, and other disturbances made Haifa increasingly uninhabitable. The Arab leaders of Haifa dispatched an emergency delegation to Cairo in late January, warning that, if terrorist activity did not cease, the result would be the eventual disappearance of the entire Haifa community. Their warning had no effect.

There is an overwhelming body of evidence from contemporary Arab, Jewish, British, and American sources to prove that, far from seeking to drive the Arabs out of Haifa, the Jewish authorities went to considerable lengths to convince them to stay. During the fighting in the city in April 1948, The Hagana’s truce terms stipulated that Arabs were expected to "carry on their work as equal and free citizens of Haifa." In its Arabic-language broadcasts and communications, the Hagana consistently articulated the same message. On April 22, at the height of the fighting, it distributed a circular noting its ongoing campaign to clear the town of all "criminal foreign bands" so as to allow the restoration of "peace and security and good neighborly relations among all of the town’s inhabitants." On April 29, even Farid Saad of the [Arab] National Committee was saying that Jewish leaders had "organized a large propaganda campaign to persuade [the] Arabs to return."

As the Jews were attempting to keep the Arabs in Haifa, an ad-hoc body, the Arab Emergency Committee, under orders from the Arab Higher Committee, was doing its best to get them out. Scaremongering was a major weapon in its arsenal. Some Arab residents received written threats that, unless they left town, they would be branded as traitors deserving of death. Others were told they could expect no mercy from the Jews. Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Murad of the National Committee, who had headed the truce negotiating team, proved particularly effective at this latter tactic: on April 23, he warned a large group of escapees from the neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas, who were about to return to their homes, that if they did so they would all be killed, as the Jews spared not even women and children. On the other hand, he continued, the Arab Legion had 200 trucks ready to transfer the Haifa refugees to a safe haven, where they would be given free accommodation,clothes, and food. Sir Alan Cunningham, the British high commissioner for Palestine, wrote in an official communication to London:

British authorities in Haifa have formed the impression that total evacuation is being urged on the Haifa Arabs from higher Arab quarters and that the townsfolk themselves are against it.
Syria's UN delegate, Faris el-Khouri, interrupted the UN debate on April 22, 1948 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." The following day (April 23, 1948), 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. The same day, 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."

Palestinian Arabs bemoan "the uprooting of the Palestinian people in one of the worst crimes of modern history." But were they uprooted, and if so by whom? In Haifa, one of the largest and most dramatic locales of the Palestinian exodus, not only had half the Arab community fled the city before the final battle was joined, but another 5,000-15,000 apparently left voluntarily during the fighting while the rest, some 15,000-25,000 souls, were ordered or bullied into leaving against their wishes, almost certainly on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee. The crime was exclusively of Arab making. There was no Jewish grand design to force this departure, nor was there a psychological "blitz." To the contrary, both the Haifa Jewish leadership and the Hagana went to great lengths to convince the Arabs to stay.

The well-documented efforts, indeed, reflected the wider Jewish attitude in Palestine. All deliberations of the Jewish leadership regarding the transition to statehood were based on the assumption that, in the Jewish state that would arise with the termination of the British Mandate, Palestine’s Arabs would remain as equal citizens. Israel's Proclamation of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, 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.
In the country as a whole, just as in Haifa, the first Arabs 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. All of those who left fully anticipated being able to return to their homes after an early Arab victory, as Palestinian nationalist Aref el-Aref explained in his history of the 1948 war:

The Arabs thought they would win in less than the twinkling of an eye and that it would take no more than a day or two from the time the Arab armies crossed the border until all the colonies were conquered and the enemy would throw down his arms and cast himself on their mercy.
The fabrication can probably most easily be seen in that at the time the alleged cruel expulsion of Arabs by Zionists was in progress, it passed unnoticed. Foreign newspapermen who covered the war of 1948 on both sides did, indeed, write about the flight of the Arabs, but even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that it was not voluntary. In the three months during which the major part of the flight took place -- April, May, and June 1948 -- the London Times, at that time openly hostile to Zionism, published eleven leading articles on the situation in Palestine in addition to extensive news reports and articles. In none was there even a hint of the charge that the Zionists were driving the Arabs from their homes.

More interesting still, no Arab spokesman mentioned the subject. At the height of the flight, on April 27, Jamal Husseini, the Palestine Arabs' chief representative at the United Nations, made his long political statement, which was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later -- while the flight was still in progress -- the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

Throughout the period that preceded the May 15 invasion of the Arab regular armies, large-scale military engagements, incessant sniping, robberies and bombings took place. In view of the thousands of casualties that resulted from the pre-invasion violence, it is not surprising that many Arabs would have fled out of fear for their lives. The second phase of the Arab flight began after the Jewish forces started to register military victories against Arab irregulars, as in the battles for Tiberias and Haifa. Arab leaders were alarmed by these developments:

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."
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."
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" (London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948).
More than 200,000 Arabs had left the country by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. When the invasion by Arab armies began the next day, most Arabs remaining in Palestine left for neighboring countries. The Palestinian Arabs chose to flee to the safety of the other Arab states, still confident of being able to return, rather than remaining in Israel to act as a strategically valuable "fifth­column" in the war. 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. (Middle East Journal, October 1949)
As the possibility of Arab defeat turned into reality, the flight of the Arabs increased, exacerbated further by the atrocity stories following the attack on Dir Yassin. More than 300,000 departed after May 15, leaving approximately 160,000 Arabs in the State of Israel. Although most of the Arabs had left by November 1948, there were still those who chose to leave even after hostilities ceased. One survey concluded that sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

The research done by Benny Morris in Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem is, despite occasional inaccuracies, more detailed and accurate than anything that preceded it. If we consider the facts Morris presents, it is reasonably clear that the flight of much of the Arab population from the territory that became Israel stemmed from battles between Arab and Jewish forces, and from the fears of Arab civilians of getting caught in the fighting. The Zionist leadership, Morris' research shows, correctly understood the danger that the Palestinian Arabs posed to the nascent Jewish state, and therefore did little to prevent their departure, at times encouraging or even precipitating it through political or military actions. In fact, Morris' own research does much to disprove the claims of his recent writings that what happened during the War of Independence was "ethnic cleansing."

The role of Arab leaders in urging the Arab population to leave is similarly well-documented. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, 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.
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 re­enter and retake possession of their country.
In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948­49, 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.
Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al­Janub (August 16, 1948):

The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. 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.
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.
Habib Issa said in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951):

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. 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.
And 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.
In a few, exceptional cases accounting for only a small fraction of the Palestinian refugees, The Haganah did employ psychological warfare to encourage the Arabs to abandon a few villages. This insignificant element of the issue has been magnified by pro-Palestinian Arab advocates as if it were the whole problem.


I knew you'd evade backing up your hilarious tripe excuse for a claim that all Palestinian males have the Cohen Modal Haplotype. So much for your negative credibility. Quelle surprise. BYW, you're the gutter creature known as 'TheTroll'. Your nym shift game is futile.

Zionism And Its Impact By Ann M. Lesch eMail to a friend

Posted on AUGUST-13-2001

By Ann M. Lesch

The Zionist movement has maintained a striking continuity in its aims and methods over the past century. From the start, the movement sought to achieve a Jewish majority in Palestine and to establish a Jewish state on as much of the LAND as possible. The methods included promoting both mass Jewish immigration and acquiring tracts of land that would become the inalienable property of the Jewish people. This policy inevitably prevented the indigenous Arab residents from attaining their national goals and establishing a Palestinian state. It also necessitated displacing Palestinians from their lands and jobs when their presence conflicted with Zionist interests.

The Zionist movement-and subsequently the state of ISRAEL-failed to develop a positive approach to the Palestinian presence and Palestinian aspirations. Although many Israelis recognized the moral dilemma posed by the Palestinians, the majority either tried to ignore the issue or to resolve it by force majeure. Thus, the Palestine problem festered and grew, instead of being resolved.

* Historical Background
* The British Mandate
* The Zionist Movement
* Practical Zionism
* Policies Toward the Palestinians
* Conclusion

Historical Background

The Zionist movement arose in late nineteenth-century Europe, influenced by the nationalist ferment sweeping that continent. Zionism acquired its particular focus from the ancient Jewish longing for the return to Zion and received a strong impetus from the increasingly intolerable conditions facing the large Jewish community in Tsarist Russia. The movement also developed at the time of major European territorial acquisitions in Asia and Africa, and benefited from the European powers' competition for influence in the shrinking Ottoman Empire.

One result of this involvement with European expansionism, however, was that the leaders of the nascent nationalist movements in the Middle East viewed Zionism as an adjunct of European colonialism. Moreover, Zionist assertions of the contemporary relevance of the Jews' historical ties to Palestine, coupled with their land purchases and immigration, alarmed the indigenous population of the Ottoman districts that comprised Palestine. The Jewish community (yishuv) rose from 6 percent of Palestine's population in 1880 to 10 percent by 1914. Although the numbers were insignificant, the settlers were outspoken enough to arouse the opposition of Arab leaders and induce them to exert counter pressure on the Ottoman regime to prohibit Jewish immigration and land buying.

As early as 1891, a group of Muslim and Christian notables cabled Istanbul, urging the government to prohibit Jewish immigration and land purchase. The resulting edicts radically curtailed land purchases in the Sanjak (district) of JERUSALEM for the next decade. When a Zionist Congress resolution in 1905 called for increased colonization, the Ottoman regime suspended all land transfers to Jews in both the Sanjak of Jerusalem and the Wilayat (province) of Beirut.
After the coup d'etat by the Young Turks in 1908, the Palestinians used their representation in the central parliament and their access to newly opened local newspapers to press their claims and express their concerns. They were particularly vociferous in opposition to discussions that took place between the financially hard-pressed Ottoman regime and Zionist leaders in 1912-13, which would have let the world Zionist Organization purchase crown land (Jiftlik) in the Baysan Valley, along the Jordan River.

The Zionists did not try to quell Palestinian fears, since their concern was to encourage colonization from Europe and to minimize the obstacles in their path. The only effort to meet to discuss Palestinian and Zionist aspirations occurred in the spring of 1914. Its difficulties illustrated the incompatibility in the aims of both sides aspirations. The Palestinians wanted the Zionists to present them with a document that would state

* Zionists precise political ambitions,
* Zionists willingness to open their schools to Palestinians, and
* Zionists intentions of learning Arabic and integrating with the local population.

The Zionists rejected this proposal.
The British Mandate

The proclamation of the BALFOUR DECLARATION on November 2, 1917, and the arrival of British troops in Palestine soon after, transformed the political situation. The declaration gave the Zionist movement its long-sought legal status. The qualification that: nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine seemed a relatively insignificant obstacle to the Zionists, especially since it referred only to those communities': civil and religious rights, not to political or national rights. The subsequent British occupation gave Britain the ability to carry out that pledge and provide the protection necessary for the Zionists to realize their aims.

In fact, the British had made three mutually contradictory promises for the future of Palestine. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 with the French and Russian governments proposed that Palestine be placed under international administration. The HUSAYN-MCMAHON CORRESPONDENCE, 1915-1916, on the basis of which the Arab revolt was launched, implied that Palestine would be included in the zone of Arab independence. In contrast, the Balfour Declaration encouraged the colonization of Palestine by Jews, under British protection. British officials recognized the irreconcilability of these pledges but hoped that a modus vivendi could be achieved, both between the competing imperial powers, "France and Britain", and between the Palestinians and the Jews. Instead, these contradictions set the stage for three decades of conflict-ridden British rule in Palestine.

Initially, many British politicians shared the Zionists' assumption that gradual, regulated Jewish immigration and settlement would lead to a Jewish majority in Palestine, whereupon it would become independent, with legal protection for the Arab minority .The assumption that this could be accomplished without serious resistance was shattered at the outset of British rule. Britain thereafter was caught in an increasingly untenable position, unable to persuade either Palestinians or Zionists to alter their demands and forced to station substantial military forces in Palestine to maintain security.

The Palestinians had assumed that they would gain some form of independence when Ottoman rule disintegrated, whether through a separate state or integration with neighboring Arab lands. These hopes were bolstered by the Arab revolt, the entry of Faysal Ibn Husayn into Damascus in 1918, and the proclamation of Syrian independence in 1920. Their hopes were dashed, however, when Britain imposed direct colonial rule and elevated the yishuv to a special status. Moreover, the French ousted Faysal from Damascus in July 1920, and British compensation-in the form of thrones in Transjordan and Iraq for Abdullah and Faysal, respectively-had no positive impact on the Arabs in Palestine. In fact, the action underlined the different treatment accorded Palestine and its disadvantageous political situation. These concerns were exacerbated by Jewish immigration: the yishuv comprised 28 percent of the population by 1936 and reached 32 percent by 1947 (click here to view map of Palestinian vs. Jewish population distribution as of 1946). The British umbrella was critically important to the growth and consolidation of the yishuv, enabling it to root itself firmly despite Palestinian opposition. Although British support diminished in the late 1930s, the yishuv was strong enough by then to withstand the Palestinians on its own. After World War II, the Zionist movement also was able to turn to the emerging superpower, the UNITED STATES, for diplomatic support and legitimization.

The Palestinians' responses to Jewish immigration, land purchases, and political demands were remarkably consistent. They insisted that Palestine remain an Arab country, with the same right of self-determination and independence as Egypt, Transjordan, and Iraq. Britain granted those countries independence without a violent struggle since their claims to self-determination were not contested by European settlers. The Palestinians argued that Palestinian territory could not and should not be used to solve the plight of the Jews in Europe, and that Jewish national aspirations should not override their own rights.

Palestinian opposition peaked in the late 1930s: the six-month general strike in 1936 was followed the next year by a widespread rural revolt. This rebellion welled up from the bottom of Palestinian society-unemployed urban workers, displaced peasants crowded into towns, and debt-ridden villagers. It was supported by most merchants and professionals in the towns, who feared competition from the yishuv. Members of the elite families acted as spokesmen before the British administration through the ARAB HIGHER COMMITTEE, which was formed during the 1936 strike. However, the British banned the committee in October 1937 and arrested its members, on the eve of the revolt.

Only one of the Palestinian political parties was willing to limit its aims and accept the principle of territorial partition: The NATIONAL DEFENSE PARTY, led by RAGHIB AL-NASHASHIBI (mayor of Jerusalem from 1920 to 1934), was willing to accept partition in 1937 so long as the Palestinians obtained sufficient land and could merge with Transjordan to form a larger political entity. However, the British PEEL COMMISSION's plan, announced in July 1937, would have forced the Palestinians to leave the olive- and grain- growing areas of Galilee, the orange groves on the Mediterranean coast, and the urban port cities of HAIFA and ACRE. That was too great a loss for even the National Defense Party to accept, and so it joined in the general denunciations of partition.

During the PALESTINE MANDATE period the Palestinian community was 70 percent rural, 75 to 80 percent illiterate, and divided internally between town and countryside and between elite families and villagers. Despite broad support for the national aims, the Palestinians could not achieve the unity and strength necessary to withstand the combined pressure of the British forces and the Zionist movement. In fact, the political structure was decapitated in the late 1930s when the British banned the Arab Higher Committee and arrested hundreds of local politicians. When efforts were made in the 1940s to rebuild the political structure, the impetus came largely from outside, from Arab rulers who were disturbed by the deteriorating conditions in Palestine and feared their repercussions on their own newly acquired independence.

The Arab rulers gave priority to their own national considerations and provided limited diplomatic and military support to the Palestinians. The Palestinian Arabs continued to demand a state that would reflect the Arab majority's weight-diminished to 68 percent by 1947. They rejected the UNITED NATIONS (U.N.) partition plan of November 1947[click here for a map illustration], which granted the Jews statehood in 55 percent of Palestine, an area that included as many Arab residents as Jews. However, the Palestinian Arabs lacked the political strength and military force to back up their claim. Once Britain withdrew its forces in 1948 and the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel, the Arab rulers used their armed forces to protect those zones that the partition plans had ALLOCATED to the Arab state [click here for a map illustration]. By the time armistice agreements were signed in 1949, the Arab areas had shrunk to only 23 percent of Palestine. The Egyptian army held the GAZA STRIP, and Transjordanian forces dominated the hills of central Palestine. At least 726,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs fled from the area held by Israel. Emir Abdullah subsequently annexed the zone that his army occupied, renaming it the WEST BANK.
The Zionist Movement

The dispossession and expulsion of a majority of Palestinians were the result of Zionist policies planned over a thirty-year period. fundamentally, Zionism focused on two needs:

1. to attain a Jewish majority in Palestine
2. to acquire statehood

irrespective of the wishes of the indigenous population. Non-recognition of the political and national rights of the Palestinian people was a KEY Zionist policy.

Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, placed maximalist demands before the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919. He stated that he expected 70,000 to 80,000 Jewish immigrants to arrive each year in Palestine. When they became the majority, they would form an independent government and Palestine and would become: "as Jewish as England is English". Weizmann proposed that the boundaries should be the Mediterranean Sea on the west; Sidon, the Litani River, and Mount Hermon on the north; all of Transjordan west of the Hijaz railway on the east; and a line across Sinai from Aqaba to al-Arish on the south. He argued that:

"the boundaries above outlined are what we consider essential for the economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have its natural outlet to the sea and control of its rivers and their headwaters. The boundaries are sketched with the general economic needs and historic traditions of the country in mind."

Weizmann offered the Arab countries a free zone in Haifa and a joint port at Aqaba.

Weizmann's policy was basically in accord with that of the leaders of the yishuv, who held a conference in December 1918 in which they formulated their own demands for the peace conference. The yishuv plan stressed that they must control appointments to the administrative services and that the British must actively assist their program to transform Palestine into a democratic Jewish state in which the Arabs would have minority rights. Although the peace conference did not explicitly allocate such extensive territories to the Jewish national home and did not support the goal of transforming all of Palestine into a Jewish state, it opened the door to such a possibility. More important, Weizmann's presentation stated clearly and forcefully the long-term aims of the movement.

These aims were based on certain fundamental tenets of Zionism:

1. The movement was seen not only as inherently righteous, but also as meeting an overwhelming need among European Jews.
2. European culture was superior to indigenous Arab culture; the Zionists could help civilize the East.
3. External support was needed from a major power; relations with the Arab world were a secondary matter.
4. Arab nationalism was a legitimate political movement, but Palestinian nationalism was either illegitimate or nonexistent.
5. Finally, if the Palestinians would not reconcile themselves to Zionism, force majeure, not compromise, was the only feasible response.

First

Adherents of Zionism believed that the Jewish people had an inherent and inalienable right to Palestine. Religious Zionists stated this in biblical terms, referring to the divine promise of the land to the tribes of Israel. Secular Zionists relied more on the argument that Palestine alone could solve the problem of Jewish dispersion and virulent anti-Semitism. Weizmann stated in 1930 that the needs of 16 million Jews had to be balanced against those of 1 million Palestinian Arabs:
"The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate have definitely lifted [Palestine] out of the context of the Middle East and linked it up with the world-wide Jewish problem. ...The rights which the Jewish people has been adjudged in Palestine do not depend on the consent, and cannot be subjected to the will, of the majority of its present inhabitants."
This perspective took its most extreme form with the Revisionist movement. Its founder, Vladimir Jabotinsky, was so self-righteous about the Zionist cause that he justified any actions taken against the Arabs in order to realize Zionist goals.
Second

Zionists generally felt that European civilization was superior to Arab culture and values. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, wrote in the Jewish State (1886) that the Jewish community could serve as:
"part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."

Weizmann also believed that he was engaged in a fight of civilization against the desert. The Zionists would bring enlightenment and economic development to the backward Arabs. Similarly, David Ben-Gurion, the leading labor Zionist, could not understand why Arabs rejected his offer to use Jewish finance, scientific knowledge, and technical expertise to modernize the Middle East. He attributed this rejection to backwardness rather than to the affront that Zionism posed to the Arabs' pride and to their aspirations for independence.
Third

Zionist leaders recognized that they needed an external patron to legitimize their presence in the international arena and to provide them legal and military protection in Palestine. Great Britain played that role in the 1920s and 1930s, and the United States became the mentor in the mid-1940s. Zionist leaders realized that they needed to make tactical accommodations to that patron-such as downplaying their public statements about their political aspirations or accepting a state on a limited territory-while continuing to work toward their long-term goals. The presence and needs of the Arabs were viewed as secondary. The Zionist leadership never considered allying with the Arab world against the British and Americans. Rather, Weizmann, in particular, felt that the yishuv should bolster the British Empire and guard its strategic interests in the region. Later, the leaders of Israel perceived the Jewish state as a strategic asset to the United States in the Middle East.
Fourth

Zionist politicians accepted the idea of an Arab nation but rejected the concept of a Palestinian nation. They considered the Arab residents of Palestine as comprising a minute fraction of the land and people of the Arab world, and as lacking any separate identity and aspirations (click here, to read our response to this myth). Weizmann and Ben-Gurion were willing to negotiate with Arab rulers in order to gain those rulers' recognition of Jewish statehood in Palestine in return for the Zionists' recognition of Arab independence elsewhere, but they would not negotiate with the Arab politicians in Palestine for a political settlement in their common homeland. As early as 1918, Weizmann wrote to a prominent British politician:
"The real Arab movement is developing in Damascus and Mecca. ..the so-called Arab question in Palestine would therefore assume only a purely local character, and in fact is not considered a serious factor."

In line with that thinking, Weizmann met with Emir Faysal in the same year, in an attempt to win his agreement to Jewish statehood in Palestine in return for Jewish financial support for Faysal as ruler of Syria and Arabia.

Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and other Zionist leaders met with prominent Arab officials during the 1939 LONDON CONFERENCE, which was convened by Britain to seek a compromise settlement in Palestine. The Arab diplomats from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia criticized the exceptional position that the Balfour Declaration had granted the Jewish community and emphasized the estrangement between the Arab and Jewish residents that large scale Jewish immigration had caused. In response, Weizmann insisted that Palestine remain open to all Jews who wanted to immigrate, and Ben-Gurion suggested that all of Palestine should become a Jewish state, federated with the surrounding Arab states. The Arab participants criticized these demands for exacerbating the conflict, rather than contributing to the search for peace. The Zionists' premise that Arab statehood could be recognized while ignoring the Palestinians was thus rejected by the Arab rulers themselves.
Fifth

Finally, Zionist leaders argued that if the Palestinians could not reconcile themselves to Zionism, then force majeure, not a compromise of goals, was the only possible response. By the early 1920s, after violent Arab protests broke out in Jaffa and Jerusalem, leaders of the yishuv recognized that it might be impossible to bridge the gap between the aims of the two peoples. Building the national home would lead to an unavoidable clash, since the Arab majority would not agree to become a minority. In fact, as early as 1919 Ben-Gurion stated bluntly:

"Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can fill this gulf. ...I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews. ...We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs."

As tensions increased in the 1920s and the 1930s Zionist leaders realized that they had to coerce the Palestinian acquiesce in a diminished status. Ben-Gurion stated in 1937, during the Arab revolt:

"This is a national war declared upon us by the Arabs. ... This is an active resistance by the Palestinians to what they regard as a usurpation of their homeland by the Jews. ...But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves."

This sober conclusion did not lead Ben-Gurion to negotiate with the Palestinian Arabs: instead he became more determined to strengthen the Jewish military forces so that they could compel the Arabs to relinquish their claims.
Practical Zionism

In order to realize the aims of Zionism and build the Jewish national home, the Zionist movement undertook the following practical steps. They:

1. Built political structures that could assume state functions
2. Created a military force.
3. Promoted large-scale immigration.
4. Acquired land as the inalienable property of the Jewish people
5. Established monopolistic concessions. The labor federation, Histadrut, tried to force Jewish enterprises to hire only Jewish labor
6. Setting up an autonomous Hebrew-language educational system.

These measures created a self-contained national entity on Palestinian soil that was ENTIRELY SEPARATE from the Arab community.

The yishuv established an elected community council, executive body, administrative departments, and religious courts soon after the British assumed control over Palestine. When the PALESTINE MANDATE was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, the World Zionist Organization gained the responsibility to advise and cooperate with the British administration not only on economic and social matters affecting the Jewish national home but also on issues involving the general development of the country. Although the British rejected pressure to give the World Zionist Organization an equal share in administration and control over immigration and land transfers, the yishuv did gain a privileged advisory position.

The Zionists were strongly critical of British efforts to establish a LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL in 1923, 1930, and 1936. They realized that Palestinians' demands for a legislature with a Palestinian majority ran counter to their own need to delay establishing representative bodies until the Jewish community was much larger. In 1923, the Jewish residents did participate in the elections for a Legislative Council, but they were relieved that the Palestinians' boycott compelled the British to cancel the results. In 1930 and 1936 the World Zionist Organization vigorously opposed British proposals for a legislature, fearing that, if the Palestinians received the majority status that proportional representation would require, then they would try to block Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by Zionist companies. Zionist opposition was couched indirectly in the assertion that Palestine was not ripe for self-rule, a code for not until there's a Jewish majority.
To bolster this position, the yishuv formed defense forces (Haganah) in March 1920. They were preceded by the establishment of guards (hashomer) in Jewish rural settlements in the 1900s and the formation of a Jewish Legion in World War I. However, the British disbanded the Jewish Legion and allowed only sealed armories in the settlements and mixed Jewish-British area defense committees.

Despite its illegal status, the Haganah expanded to number 10,000 trained and mobilized men, and 40,000 reservists by 1936. During the 1937-38 Arab revolt, the Haganah engaged in active defense against Arab insurgents and cooperated with the British to guard railway lines, the oil pipeline to Haifa, and border fences. This cooperation deepened during World War II, when 18,800 Jewish volunteers joined the British forces. Haganah's special Palmach units served as scouts and sappers for the British army in Lebanon in 1941-42. This wartime experience helped to transform the Haganah into a regular fighting force. When Ben-Gurion became the World Zionist Organization's secretary of defense in June 1947, he accelerated mobilization as well as arms buying in the United States and Europe. As a result, mobilization leaped to 30,000 by May 1948, when statehood was proclaimed, and then doubled to 60,000 by mid-July-twice the number serving in the Arab forces arrayed against Israel.

A principal means for building up the national home was the promotion of large-scale immigration from Europe. Estimates of the Palestinian population demonstrate the dramatic impact of immigration. The first British census (December 31, 1922) counted 757,182 residents, of whom 83,794 were Jewish. The second census (December 31, 1931) enumerated 1,035,821, including 174,006 Jews. Thus, the absolute number of Jews had doubled and the relative number had increased from 11 percent to 17 percent. Two-thirds of this growth could be attributed to net immigration, and one third to natural increase. Two-thirds of the yishuv was concentrated in Jerusalem and Jaffa and Tel Aviv, with most of the remainder in the north, including the towns of HAIFA, SAFAD, and Tiberias.

The Mandate specified that the rate of immigration should accord with the economic capacity of the country to absorb the immigrants. In 1931, the British government reinterpreted this to take into account only the Jewish sector of the economy, excluding the Palestinian sector, which was suffering from heavy unemployment. As a result, the pace of immigration accelerated in 1932 and peaked in 1935-36. In other words, the absolute number of Jewish residents doubled in the five years from 1931 to 1936 to 370,000, so that they constituted 28 percent of the total population. Not until 1939 did the British impose a severe quota on Jewish immigrants. That restriction was resisted by the yishuv with a sense of desperation, since it blocked access to a key haven for the Jews whom Hitler was persecuting and exterminating in Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe. Net immigration was limited during the war years in the 1940s, but the government estimated in 1946 that there were about 583,000 Jews of nearly 1,888,000 residents, or 31 percent of the total Seventy percent of them were urban, and they continued to be overwhelmingly concentrated in Jerusalem (100,000) the Haifa area (119,000), and the JAFFA and RAMLA districts (327,000) (click here for a map illustrating Palestine's population distribution in 1946) . The remaining 43,000 were largely in Galilee, with a scattering in the Negev and almost none in the central highlands.

The World Zionist Organization's purchasing agencies launched large-scale land purchases in order to found rural settlements and stake territorial claims. In 1920 the Zionists held about 650,000 dunums (one dunum equals approximately one-quarter of an acre). By 1930, the amount had expanded to 1,164,000 dunums and by 1936 to 1,400,000 dunums. The major purchasing agent (the Palestine Land Development Company) estimated that, by 1936, 89 percent had been bought from large landowners (primarily absentee owners from Beirut) and only 11 percent from peasants. By 1947, the yishuv held 1.9 million dunums. Nevertheless, this represented only 7 percent of the total land surface or 10 to 12 percent of the cultivable land (click here for a map illustrating Palestine's landownership distribution in 1946).

According to Article 3 of the Constitution of the Jewish Agency, the land was held by the Jewish National Fund as the inalienable property of the Jewish people; ONLY Jewish labor could be employed in the settlements, Palestinians protested bitterly against this inalienability clause. The moderate National Defense Party , for example, petitioned the British in 1935 to prevent further land sales, arguing that it was a: life and death for the Arabs, in that it resulted in the transfer of their country to other hands and the loss of their nationality.

The placement of Jewish settlements was often based on political considerations. The Palestine Land Development Company had four criteria for land purchase:

1. The economic suitability of the tract
2. Its contribution to forming a solid block of Jewish territory.
3. The prevention of isolation of settlements
4. The impact of the purchase on the political-territorial claims of the Zionists.

The stockade and watchtower settlements constructed in 1937, for example, were designed to secure control over key parts of Galilee for the yishuv in case the British implemented the PEEL PARTITION PLAN. Similarly, eleven settlements were hastily erected in the Negev in late 1946 in an attempt to stake a political claim in that entirely Palestinian-populated territory.

In addition to making these land purchases, prominent Jewish businessmen won monopolistic concessions from the British government that gave the Zionist movement an important role in the development of Palestine's natural resources. In 1921, Pinhas Rutenberg's Palestine Electric Company acquired the right to electrify all of Palestine except Jerusalem. Moshe Novomeysky received the concession to develop the minerals in the Dead Sea in 1927. And the Palestine Land Development Company gained the concession to drain the Hula marshes, north of the Sea of Galilee, in 1934. In each case, the concession was contested by other serious non-Jewish claimants; Palestinian politicians argued that the government should retain control itself in order to develop the resources for the benefit of the entire country.

The inalienability clause in the Jewish National Fund contracts included provision that ONLY JEWS could work on Jewish agricultural settlements. The concepts of manual labor and the return to the soil were key to the Zionist enterprise. This Jewish labor policy was enforced by the General Foundation of Jewish Labor (Histadrut), founded in 1920 and headed by David Ben-Gurion. Since some Jewish builders and citrus growers hired Arabs, who worked for lower wages than Jews, the Histadrut launched a campaign in 1933 to remove those Arab workers. Histadrut organizers picketed citrus groves and evicted Arab workers from construction sites and factories in the cities. The strident propaganda by the Histradut increased the Arabs' fears for the future. George Mansur, a Palestinian labor leader, wrote angrily in 1937:

"The Histadrut's fundamental aim is 'the conquest of labor' ...No matter how many Arab workers are unemployed, they have no right to take any job which a possible immigrant might occupy. No Arab has the right to work in Jewish undertakings."

Finally, the establishment of an all-Jewish, Hebrew-language educational system was an essential component of building the Jewish national home. It helped to create a cohesive national ethos and a lingua franca among the diverse immigrants. However, it also entirely separated Jewish children from Palestinian children, who attended the governmental schools. The policy widened the linguistic and cultural gap between the two peoples. In addition, there was a stark contrast in their literacy levels. In 1931:

* 93 percent of Jewish males (above age seven) were literate
* 71 percent of Christian males were literate
* Only 25 percent of Muslim males were literate.

Overall, Palestinian literacy increased from 19 percent in 1931 to 27 percent by 1940, but only 30 percent of Palestinian children could be accommodated in government and private schools.

The practical policies of the Zionist movement created a compact and well-rooted community by the late 1940s. The yishuv had its own political, educational, economic, and military institutions, parallel to the governmental system. Jews minimized their contact with the Arab community and outnumbered the Arabs in certain key respects. Jewish urban dwellers, for example, greatly exceeded Arab urbanites, even though Jews constituted but one-third of the population. Many more Jewish children attended school than did Arab children, and Jewish firms employed seven times as many workers as Arab firms.

Thus the relative weight and autonomy of the yishuv were much greater than sheer numbers would suggest. The transition to statehood was facilitated by the existence of the proto state institutions and a mobilized, literate public. But separation from the Palestinian residents was exacerbated by these autarchic policies.
Policies Toward the Palestinians

The main viewpoint within the Zionist movement was that the Arab problem would be solved by first solving the Jewish problem. In time, the Palestinians would be presented with the fait accompli of a Jewish majority. Settlements, land purchases, industries, and military forces were developed gradually and systematically so that the yishuv would become too strong to uproot. In a letter to his son, Weizmann compared the Arabs to the rocks of Judea, obstacles that had to be cleared to make the path smooth. When the Palestinians mounted violent protests in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39, and the late 1940s, the yishuv sought to curb them by force, rather than seek a political accommodation with the indigenous people. Any concessions made to the Palestinians by the British government concerning immigration, land sales, or labor were strongly contested by the Zionist leaders. In fact, in 1936, Ben-Gurion stated that the Palestinians will only acquiesce in a Jewish Eretz Israel after they are in a state of total despair.

Zionists viewed their acceptance of territorial partition as a temporary measure; they did not give up the idea of the Jewish community's right to all of Palestine. Weizmann commented in 1937:

"In the course of time we shall expand to the whole country ...this is only an arrangement for the next 15-30 years."

Ben-Gurion stated in 1938,

"After we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine."

A FEW EFFORTS were made to reduce Arab opposition. For example in the 1920s, Zionist organizations provided financial support to Palestinian political parties, newspapers, and individuals. This was most evident in the establishment and support of the National Muslim Societies (1921-23) and Agricultural Parties (1924-26). These parties were expected to be neutral or positive toward the Zionist movement, in return for which they would receive financial subventions and their members would be helped to obtain jobs and loans. This policy was backed by Weizmann, who commented that:
"extremists and moderates alike were susceptible to the influence of money and honors."
However, Leonard Stein, a member of the London office of the World Zionist Organization, denounced this practice. He argued that Zionists must seek a permanent modus vivendi with the Palestinians by hiring them in Jewish firms and admitting them to Jewish universities. He maintained that political parties in which Arab moderates are merely Arab gramophones playing Zionist records would collapse as soon as the Zionist financial support ended. In any event, the World Zionist Organization terminated the policy by 1927, as it was in the midst of a financial crisis and as most of the leaders felt that the policy was ineffective.

Some Zionist leaders argued that the Arab community had to be involved in the practical efforts of the Zionist movement. Chaim Kalvarisky, who initiated the policy of buying support, articulated in 1923 the gap between that ideal and the reality:

"Some people say. ..that only by common work in the field of commerce, industry and agriculture mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs will ultimately be attained. ...This is, however, merely a theory. In practice we have not done and we are doing nothing for any work in common.

* How many Arab officials have we installed in our banks? Not even one.
* How many Arabs have we brought into our schools? Not even one.
* What commercial houses have we established in company with Arabs? Not even one."

Tow years later, Kalvarisky lamented:

"We all admit the importance of drawing closer to the Arabs, but in fact we are growing more distant like a drawn bow. We have no contact: two separate worlds, each living its own life and fighting the other."

Some members of the yishuv emphasized the need for political relations with the Palestinian Arabs, to achieve either a peacefully negotiated territorial partition (as Nahum Goldmann sought) or a binational state (as Brit Shalom and Hashomer Ha-tzair proposed). But few went as far as Dr. Judah L. Magnes, chancellor of The Hebrew University, who argued that Zionism meant merely the creation of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine rather than an independent state. In any case, the binationalists had little impact politically and were strongly opposed by the leadership of the Zionist movement.

Zionist leaders felt they did not harm the Palestinians by blocking them from working in Jewish settlements and industries or even by undermining their majority status. The Palestinians were considered a small part of the large Arab nation; their economic and political needs could be met in that wider context, Zionists felt, rather than in Palestine. They could move elsewhere if they sought land and could merge with Transjordan if they sought political independence.

This thinking led logically to the concept of population TRANSFER. In 1930 Weizmann suggested that the problems of insufficient land resources within Palestine and of the dispossession of peasants could be solved by moving them to Transjordan and Iraq. He urged the Jewish Agency to provide a loan of £1 million to help move Palestinian farmers to Transjordan. The issue was discussed at length in the Jewish Agency debates of 1936-37 on partition. At first, the majority proposed a voluntary transfer of Palestinians from the Jewish state, but later they realized that the Palestinians would never leave voluntarily. Therefore, key leaders such as Ben-Gurion insisted that compulsory transfer was essential. The Jewish Agency then voted that the British government should pay for the removal of the Palestinian Arabs from the territory allotted to the Jewish state.

The fighting from 1947 to 1949 resulted in a far larger transfer than had been envisioned in 1937. It solved the Arab problem by removing most of the Arabs and was the ultimate expression of the policy of force majeure.
Conclusion

The land and people of Palestine were transformed during the thirty years of British rule. The systematic colonization undertaken by the Zionist movement enabled the Jewish community to establish separate and virtually autonomous political, economic, social, cultural, and military institutions. A state within a state was in place by the time the movement launched its drive for independence. The legal underpinnings for the autonomous Jewish community were provided by the British Mandate. The establishment of a Jewish state was first proposed by the British Royal Commission in July 1937 and then endorsed by the UNITED NATIONS in November 1947.

That drive for statehood IGNORED the presence of a Palestinian majority with its own national aspirations. The right to create a Jewish state-and the overwhelming need for such a state-were perceived as overriding Palestinian counterclaims. Few members of the yishuv supported the idea of binationalism. Rather, territorial partition was seen by most Zionist leaders as the way to gain statehood while according certain national rights to the Palestinians. TRANSFER of Palestinians to neighboring Arab states was also envisaged as a means to ensure the formation of a homogeneous Jewish territory. The implementation of those approaches led to the formation of independent Israel, at the cost of dismembering the Palestinian community and fostering long-term hostility with the Arab world.

Ann M. Lesch
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu Lughod, Janet L. "The Demographic Transformation of Palestine." In The Tansformation of Palestine, ed. by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Evanston, Ill.: Northestern University Press, 1971.
Caplan, Neil. Palestine Jew1Y and the Arab Question, 1917-25. London: Frank Cass, 1978.
Farsoun, Samih K., and Christina Zacharia. Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.
Flapan, Simha. Zionism and the Palestinians. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979.
Granott (Granovsky), Avraham. The Land System in Palestine. London: Frank CaBs, 1978.
Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest Palestine 1914-1979. Rev. ed. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books, 1979.
Hattis, Susan Lee. The Bi-National Idea in Palestine during Mandatoy Times. Haifa: Shikmona Publishing Co., 1970.
Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
Hurewitz, J. C. The Struggle for Palestine. Reprint. New
York: Schocken Books, 1976.
Lesch, Ann Mosely. Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Mandel, Neville. "Attempts at an Arab-Zionist Entente, 1913-1914," Middle Eastern Studies 1 (1965).
----."Turks, Arabs, and Jewish Immigration into Palestine, 1882-1914," St. Antony's Papers 17 (1965).
Mansur, George. The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate. Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1937.
Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918-1929. London: Frank Cass,
1974.
----.Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939. London: Frank CaBs, 1977.
Ro'i, Yaacov. "The Zionist Attitude to the Arabs, 1908-1914." Middle Eastern Studies 4 (1968).
Ruedy, John. "Dynamics of Land Alienation." In The Transformation of Palestine, ed. by Ibrahim Abu- Lughod. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press 1071

Re: "You took sides in a conflict you're no part of "

I have been in Palestine many times and I have in country experience. All activists have a part in exposing apartheid terror.

I doubt if you have even been in the Middle East.

You are dismissed.

The ONLY claim ZIonists have to the land is that Hebrews were ALSO murderous thieves of the land.

SUre, Judeans got kicked out. Romans also got kicked out. Turks got kicked out. But Romans and Turks getting kicked out doesn't give thier descendants a birthright of murdrous theft of the land. We hear it is differant about ZIonists. But not how it is differant. Never HOW it is differant, just that it is.

Politically and historically, how and why do you think the Palestinians have a better claim?

and the original inhabitants were living there when the pillage and slaughter began, when the land buy outs were not enough.
The Palestinians were not the aggressors , they were and are the injured people. This is why there are so many Zionists hosing all of us down with propaganda.

And the ones that stayed are the Israeli Arabs of today, who make up 20% of Israel's population. Others left at the behest of their leaders.
Remember Jesus? Really well known around the world? Some called him the "king of the Jews"- born in Israel around 2,000 years ago?
Shows there were Jews in the area 2,000 years ago. Also Romans. Where were the Palestinians in that story, btw?

Oh, that guy. Actually he said ' that's what *you* call me.' Wasn't his fault that he may or may not have been born into a society of nutbags who had him killed horribly at the hands of their common oppressor the Romans by your kind of people.
Very much like the Jews who were sacrificed to Hitler's death camps at the hands of the German Zionists. With a little help from Eichmann. That's why you hunted him down and put him in a sound proof booth. Loose ends, you know.

Jesus- nice Jewish boy. His really name was Joshua, wasn't it? So, where were the Palestinians in that story?

Its a long time since I heard the Jews killed Jesus anti-semitic canard on LA indymedia. Wait around long enough, all of the anti-Semitic canards errupt.

You are so obvious. Even when you try and hide it.

It's more about who does the killing. Usually it's the Upper class rulers, in this case the Pharisees that fed Jesus to the dogs.
It still doesn't give the rights of any people to come in a act as oppressors.
Be they Nazis, Romans or 'Jews' what ever the hell you define that chameleon like definition to be. Certainly not the genetic line of original people. The nutbags.

Wrong again, the medical studies of Jewish genetics have proven that all Jewish populations are related to each other, and more to Kurds and other pre-Islamic peoples of the Middle East than the European populations that Askenazi Jews had lived among.

Are we going to hear about the"Khazar canard" again?

what do you mean?
Like all white people?
Haw haw haw.
Your set of demographics is SOOOOOO precise. haw haw haw
Or do you mean all Zionist nutbags?

Tell us more about your feelings about skin color and your use of skin color as the only way to define people.

Good for you for having been to "Palestine" many times, but that's not the same as living there many years. Me, I've been living in Land of Israel almost three decades. You by contrast haven't made the land your home.

http://palestinefacts.org

You're bit about exposing "apartheid terror" is just drivel because you've defaulted on exposing that were you need to -- in the PA=controlled areas. Even if you supported the PA regime at least by default, you've got much to repent about as you've been an accessory to evil.

What I told you above still stands.

Naziboy:
"The ONLY claim ZIonists have to the land is that Hebrews were ALSO murderous thieves of the land. "

Instead of repeating this mendacious drivel ad infinitum, point us already to your goddamned sources from which you drew the contention that all Palestinian males possess the Cohen Modal Haplotype. Some of us notice you're evading this request. Will we die of old age before you abide by it?

I was just reading and article about a nine year old Palestinian girl being treated at Hadassah's Ein Kerem hospital. That was the same hospital that treated Sharon after his stroke. I was amazed that in Israel, a Palestinian child and an Israeli Prime minister would be treated in the same facility. Would that have happened in apartheid South Africa? Never.
Calling Israel an apartheid state dishonors the very real sacrifices of the activists that worked hard to make South Africa free. Its the wrong word to use.

Sheep the goosestepper:
"It's more about who does the killing. Usually it's the Upper class rulers, in this case the Pharisees that fed Jesus to the dogs. "

The canonic Gospels weren't authored by eye witnesses or Jesus' immediate diciples and only began to be written ten years after his death at the earliest. Moreover, there's no shred of proof for any of the conflicting accounts recorded in those Gospels of what occurred to him in his last days. It's possible that the Romans captured Jesus totally on their own without Jewish involvement.


Sheep the goosestepper:
"It still doesn't give the rights of any people to come in a act as oppressors. Be they Nazis, Romans or 'Jews' what ever the hell you define that chameleon like definition to be."

Oh, the beloved "Palestinian" Master Race, that is.


Sheep the goosestepper:
"Certainly not the genetic line of original people. The nutbags."

Exactly. None of the claims pointing to Palestinians being genetically proven indigenous to the Land of Israel excuses the behavior and ideology touted and displayed by their majority.

Did you know that ALL human beings are VERY closely related to Chimpanzees? All humans are therefore really a *Lost_Tribe* of Chimpanzees! (yes, yes, "accumulated mutations caused a divergence," blah blah -- fuck you! I'm on a rhetorical roll here) Death to the Orangutans!!!!

Does that mean that your'e not going to explain your weird obession with skin color?

try new vocabulary,"a people", "an ethnicity", "a tribe".

"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention.

Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."

Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course-that's where the real fun is-but mostly they want Israel. Why?

For one thing, trying to destroy Israel — or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it — for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on G-d's Earth, and if you've ever been around G-d's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshalling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr. Bush, G-d bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id ... uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)"

Hey Tee Wdumbya, the following concerns your obsession about the dark skin complexion of Semites.

I recall previously (at http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/169449_comment.php#172870) alluding a webpage that was down the time I composed my comment. Well it's now up. Back then I told you, "There's no such unique thing as distinctly Semitic bodily features. O Tee Wdumbya. Remember the Samaritans that I bring up every now and then? Well, until 1924 they maintained genetic purity -- never intermarrying with members of other ethnicities or religions since they stopped marrying Jews before 200 BC. Guess what? In the early 20th century some members among them were reported by visiting Western scholars to be tall, red headed and blue or green eyed.

So look:

"For example, **the Samaritans are the tallest people in Syria** [My asterisks. Palestine in 1911 was considered part of the geographical designation known as ]Syria']. The Nuṣairiyyah of northern Syria, whose average height was found to be 1,704 mm., came second. "

"The pigmentation of the Samaritans, as indicated by the color of the hair and eyes, is shown in the following tables:" hair: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/table.jsp?table_id=409&volid=10&title=SAMARITANS (notice the read and blond percentages for beards plus the relatively low percentage of black) and eyes: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/table.jsp?table_id=410&volid=10&title=SAMARITANS (notice that 25.5% of eyes are blue and gray... 11 peaople out of 43!

Let's proceed:

"Include a Blond Type. These tables make it clear that the Samaritans are by no means an exclusively brunette type. As seen by the presence of blue eyes and light hair or beards in a considerable percentage of the individuals examined, there is, on the contrary, a distinct blond type noticeable in the group."

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S#434
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=110&letter=S#435


So much for your loony racial obsession, and I know you don't intend to learn or stop raving like the madman you are.

But you're afraid to tell me what I asked you: do YOU have the putative Scottish racial features? Well, COWARD? I wager we''ll never hear you answer this.

try new vocabulary,"a people", "an ethnicity", "a tribe".

"a people", "an ethnicity", "a tribe"

Oh, I ripped the lid off this word game a while ago, Yiddo. This language is not *less* racist, it's QUINTESSENTIALLY racist

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/169468_comment.php#177671

[to Tia:] I was prepared for you to puke your "no, Jews are *A People*" line of palaver. In saying this in the past, you have consistently failed to penetrate the deeper significance of your own words. The terms you prefer for the collective identity of Jews -- "a people" or (more significantly) "a tribe" -- actually only corroborate my racist charge.

What's referred to as 'racism' should really be called 'tribalism,' since in truth it's an instinct carried forward from the tribal societies of our prehistoric past. Back 100 and more years ago, when "primitive" societies were still available for study, their language and lore revealed "racist" patterns that resonated strikingly with your own preferred language. Almost invariably, their names for their own societies amounted to "The People." Their names for neighboring "primitive" societies -- especially those with whom they were competing belligerently -- amounted to things like "enemies" "assholes" "two-legged maggots," that sort of thing. In calling themselves "The People," they were intimating their view that only members of the tribe rated full moral consideration. Everyone else wasn't quite "People." The pertinence to modern "racist" phenomena should be obvious

All you've done is couch your own bigotry in the most primordial kind of language, and this does NOT make it more defensible than anyone else's. It just slips it under most cattle's radar. I'm not most cattle. Meanwhile, if racism / *tribalism* is wrong for me and for 1930s Germans, then it's just as wrong for you. If it's okay for you, then it's okay for me too.

Why do zionists always try to have it both ways?

Your facile language games don't fool me at all. They only fool you

"What in the first place is a Jew? "The most obvious answer is the following "A person professing the Jewish faith..."

"I have conceived of Judaism as a community of tradition. "

Why the need to label, TW? Its such a regimented way of thinking.

Palestinian is a made up word. here is another one for you: American. And another: "Israel"

What palestinians choose to call themselves is thier own business and nobody else's. And what palestinians chose to call themselves doesn't denigrate the palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by Zionist crusaders. Palestinians could call themselves buttnuggets, and call thier homeland TheAss, and the ZIonist ONLY claim to the land would STILL be that hebrews were ALSO murderous thieves of the land.

How much more pathetic can Zionist enablers get than suggesting that palestinian, as a made up word, somehow makes Zionism any less of an offense.

Gaza was occupied by Egypt. So what? So the Egyptian flag flew over Gaza. Does that make the Palestinians of Gaza Egyptians??? The English flag flying over Palestine didn't make palestinians English.

The west bank was Jordanian land. But Jordan was created by England. Does the fabricated state of Jordan's flag flying over the west bank make the Palestinian locals Jordanian??? Seeing as how Jordan was created by England, it is a pretty stupid supposition.

Zionists pulled out of Gaza. And at the same time, were stealing 4 times as much land in the west bank. Zionists pulling out of Gaza and moving to other areas of Zionist occupied Palestine would be like a rapist who pulled out of his victims vagina to rape her anus. And the media presented it as a peace gesture. AND the brainwashed masses accepted it as a peace gesture.

The Israelis pulled out of Sinai- 3 times the size of Israel, strategically important, had oil- in exchange for peace. And it worked.

Israel pulled out of Gaza for the same reason.
That gesture was met by Kassam rockets at their door.

Nothing Israel does can possibly be wrong

Nothing Arabs do can possibly be right

Got it??

NO?!?

Work on it then!

...straight out of the hairy hasbara asshole, you can just go HERE:

http://www.masada2000.org/HellishSituation.html

And to see how the hasbara machine saturation bombards stupid cattle brains with this stuff, you can go here

http://tinyurl.com/saubh

Ad hominems are not rebuttals. You didn't refute the contentions in fresca's post. There's little, if that, that you can.

How many times I gotta tell you assholes? I won't read it there and I'm not gonna read it here eethurr. Dam yoo dum!!

This is tame for this eel:
"to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id ... uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)"

What? You thought I would read it THIS time??

Zahir Muhsein, a member of the Palestinian Executive Committee said in an interview in Trouw - an Amsterdam based newspaper "The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese."

"See the comments header"

6 years? Truth has an eternal shelf life, while lies start to stink the moment you say/write them.

If some Egyptuians moved to Palestine, then it is the Palestinians business, and noone else's. Sure as hell isn't the Zionist crusader's business.

oh, jews called (CALLED) themselves Palestinians (a made up word) and since brits and Palestinian Muslims (geneticly non-Arab muslims, I don't site sources, in this day and age, what you saying you don't have a seach engine?people believe what they discover on thier own more than what X tells them ) called Palestinian Jews "Palestinians" , the Palestinians are not real people (they don't even have passports of thier own, WOW!) and Zionist offenses against Palestinians is somehow (???) less offensive (thanks for showcasing how prejudiced one musty be to be an enabler of murderous thieving Zionist crusaders.)!!!.

Jordan "ILLEGALY" occupied "Judea and Sumaria" ( 2 made up words, AKA, the west bank)!!! ILLEGALY??? Meaning they didn't have 33 judeo-chtristian (small c) countries in the UN giving them the LEGAL (REPEAT< LEGAL) belssings to be thieves of ( but not murderous thieves of ) Palestinians lands. WOW. It was illegal because 33 Boltons didn't give "Jordanians" LEGAL permission to take over Palestinian lands (while NOT driving palestinians from those lands as Zionists did AND DO even as they PULLOUT of Gaza. "ILLEGALLY"??? Are you sure???? Even Sadam asked for Bush 41's blessings to invade Kuwait! Are you SURE Jordan didn't ask and get permission from the US to occupy the west bank. I mean, nobody, but nobody occupies thier neighbor's homelands WITHOUT the blessibngs form the USA.

Passports! I couldn't help trashing that one earlier. 75%, AND that means what, to the thinking among us??? That England gave the east bank PALESTINIAN lands to heshemite rulers of "Jordan" ( a creation of England). WOW, once again it is all about what flag flys over a particular piece of land, and NOT AT ALL about the people IN THOSE LANDS. Like gangsters carving up Chicago.

No Zionist occupation of palestine even though what some call Israel is Zionist occupied palestine. Thanks for trying to relieve us of the burden of thinking for ourselves. Oh, it just so hard for us to rub 2 brain cells together.

And you end with name calling. WOW!

Brief history of Palestine

2006




July 12th: Hezbollah's military wing attack two armoured IDF Humvees with anti-tank rockets, killing three soldiers and taking the remaining two in captivity to Lebanon's territory. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon. The world community responds by evacuating foreigh nationals and refusing to call for a ceasefire as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are forced to evacuate their homes and hundreds die.
June 25th, an Israeli soldier is captured by Palestinian militants who attacked an army post in Israel after crossing the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel, Israel responds by invading Gaza and bombing infrastructure.
January 20th: Hamas wins a sweeping victory in the first Palestinian parliamentary elections in a decade. Israel and the United States say they will not deal with a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas.
January 4th: Ariel Sharon suffers a stroke and Ehud Olmert becomes acting Prime Minister of Israel.

2005




August: Israel enagages in a "unlateral pullout" from Gaza (which mainly meant evacuating settlers)
January 9th, Mahmoud Abbas wins the Palestinian elections and is sworn in as President of the Palestinian National Authority

2004




November 10th: Arafat dies after being in a coma and on life-support equipment for the several days.
May: Israel Defense Forces commit massacre in Rafah
On April 17th, Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is assassinated by Israel.
On April 14th, Bush meets with Sharon and they agree on a wall in the West Bank that will make many Israeli settlements permanent.
On March 22nd Israel assassinates Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin.

2000




September 28: Second Intifada Begins. Palestinians riot after Ariel Sharon visits the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque and proclaims the area eternal Israeli territory. The violence escalates rapidly and continues today...

1993




September 13: Oslo Accords. The PLO and Israel agree to mutual recognition. The PLO renounces terrorism, yet the number of new settlements increases and Palestinian groups do not remove their charter goals of destroying Israel.

1987




The First Intifada. An explosion of popular resistance to the Israeli occupation called the Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The PLO signals that it would accept a two state solution in 1988.

1982




June 6: Israel invades Lebanon to fight the PLO. A multinational force lands in Beirut on August 20, 1982 to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. After a demoralizing occupation, Israel slowly withdraws.

1979




March 26: Egypt and Israel sign peace treaty. Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 border with Egypt.

1973




October 6: Yom Kippur War. In a surprise attack, Egypt retakes the Suez canal. Syria reconquers the Golan Heights. Israel succeeds in pushing back the Syrians.

1967




June 5: The Six-Day War. Israel attacks the Egyptians (reconquering the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza), Jordan (conquering the West Bank and Jerusalem), and Syria (conquering the Golan heights).

1964




May: Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) founded, headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria.

1956




October 29: Suez War. Israel invades the Sinai peninsula and occupies it for several months. Israel withdraws after a UN peace keeping force is placed in Sinai.

1949




April 3: Armistice between Israel and Arab states. The war has created over 780,000 Palestinian refugees. Israel has gained about 50% more territory.

1948




May 15: 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Declaration of Israel as the Jewish State. British leave Palestine. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia declare war on Israel.

1936




Arab Revolt. Over 5,000 Arabs are killed, mostly by the British, and several hundred Jews are killed by Arabs

1917




October 2: Promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, the British issue the Balfour Declaration.

"Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing."

You know what they say: "Justice Happens."

You'd better get that fallout shelter built, though, because when zionism finally does collapse from the dead weight of its own absolute moral bankruptcy, the Izzie psychotics will try to take everyone else on earth down with them out of pure spite. This is a given. The final meaning of Jabotinsky and his followers needs to be more widely appreciated: a mass psychosis of hatred and racism, pitch-black in its purity and malevolent in its posture toward EVERYONE else.

Just look for example at the way their top moles are attacking and destroying the constitutional heritage of average Americans -- Israel's staunchest electoral allies in all the world -- all so that Momma Izzie, The Only Thing That Matters™, might prevail

Check out this nuclear terror manifesto from LSU Prof. David Perlmutter:

"Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow -- it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?

For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?"

-- from a 7 April 2002 LA Times Sunday Edition guilt-trip piece titled
"ISRAEL: Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation"
http://www.antibaro.gr/international/lat_israel.htm

jewishworldreview.com carries Perlmutter's psycho-mindspawn under the more guilt-trippy title "What did you do while Israel was destroyed?"

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0502/what_did_u_do.asp

Then when the piece attracted critical attention -- because it's psycho-mindspawn -- did jewishworldreview drop the article? Did they denounce it? Why NOOO-ho-ho, they just DELETED the above two blood-curdling paragraphs! See there, now David Perlmutter NEVER SAID THAT! It's all in your stupid feeble little "anti-Semitic" mind!

UVV CORSSE

George Orwell never dreamed up a pack of political psychotics scarier than the zionists!

A *must_read*:
http://www.carolmoore.net/nuclearwar/israelithreats.html

The Impending Collapse of Zionism
by Kathleen Christison via rialator - Former CIA analyst

The Moral Bankruptcy of Israel's Founding Idea

Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?

Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?

Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?

Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.

Zionism cannot abide encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its total domination over its own space -- not merely of the space within Israel's 1967 borders, but of the surrounding space as well, extending outward to geographical limits that Zionism has not yet seen fit to set for itself. Total domination means no physical threat and no demographic threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews hold all military power, Jews control all natural resources, all neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This was the message Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither Hizbullah nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue to exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's supreme authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery. Zionism cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in the preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not Zionist is a potential threat.

In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its wildly reckless violence to destroy the nation, to make of it a killing zone where only Zionism would reign, where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate themselves, as they had during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last occupation, from 1978 to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first week of bombing, describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four Lebanese army logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to keep Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned on him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air Force said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s had dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle of the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the start of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years ago Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel, the remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.

The cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake Lebanon, at least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab population and unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster bombs, of which Israel's U.S. provider is the world's leading manufacturer (and user, in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small bombs over a several-acre area. Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and are left to be found by unsuspecting civilians returning to their homes. UN surveyors estimate that there are as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in southern Lebanon. Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and injured by this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last month.

Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of Israel's cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire took effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution was in the works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended to be more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to the preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or in some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did vast damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled a coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil and benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the Syrian coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in residential apartment blocks, being transported in ambulances, and fleeing in cars flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv act of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish dominion.

In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are unable to return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled or unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been cleared by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah, except incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its U.S. acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not conducting terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of military exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated by Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the absolute certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a war against a population that was not totally subservient, that had the audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to Israel's will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who are not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish hegemony.

Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or another since its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's longest suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The Zionists thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem, the problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the flight of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the way of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state. You can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not Jewish. Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought had disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening the Zionists' Jewish hegemony.

In the nearly 40 years since then, Israeli policy has been largely directed -- with periodic time-outs for attacks on Lebanon -- toward making the Palestinians disappear for certain. The methods of ethnic cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of agricultural land and resources, economic strangulation, crippling restrictions on commerce, home demolition, residency permit revocation, outright deportation, arrest, assassination, family separation, movement restriction, destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax monies, starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all of the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state in all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the slow strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people are crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island, Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in a month's time -- killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are being murdered at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate. Such is the value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of things.

Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide (ElectronicIntifada, September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of resistance to Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to implement an ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted in Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying Palestinians, mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is that continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction or, if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is far more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing. Pappe recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and any accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel to turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the current round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even more drastically."

And here is the crux of the situation today. Will anyone notice this horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly exposed by its wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of the Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded see this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to turn away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name of keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?

Since Israel's crazed run through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed observers in the alternative and the European and Arab media have noted the new moral nudity of Israel, and of its U.S. backer, with an unusual degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is a new awareness of growing Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering viciousness of Israeli-U.S. actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma Nabulsi, writing in the Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged, only stopped." American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5, 2006) observes that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to Israel, for it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in order to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the Lebanon war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist Edward Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term ethnic cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way in which the West and the western media accept and underwrite these policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment values."

Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found a natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of the Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the "full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting a policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified with a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish communities.

The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations, being promoted both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the rationale for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a leading Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram, August 10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is divided into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is accurate, then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all moral opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has always been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of its U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are superior to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the very basis of the state.

In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon, Arabs and Muslims have a sense, for the first time since Israel's implantation in the heart of the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that Israel in its arrogance has badly overreached and that its power and its reach can be limited. The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel Warschawski speaks of -- the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a new high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that assumes Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic clash between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East -- has been seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What it is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime pursuing absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative regime in the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony. As Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview with Charlie Rose a week into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of hegemony, are the political response of populations "that have been degraded and occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by the Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as we see now, the direct support of the United States."

Those oppressed populations are now fighting back. No matter how much Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and Israel, the Arab people now recognize the fundamental weakness of Israel's race-based culture and polity and have a growing confidence that they can ultimately defeat it. The Palestinians in particular have been at this for 60 years, never disappearing despite Israel's best designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world of their existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world is taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.

Something in the way Israel operates, and in the way the United States supports Israel's method of operating, must change. More and more commentators, inside the Arab world and outside, have begun to notice this, and a striking number are audacious enough to predict some sort of end to Zionism in the racist, exclusivist form in which it now exists and functions. This does not mean throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel will not be defeated militarily. But it can be defeated psychologically, which means putting limits on its hegemony, stopping its marauding advance through its neighborhood, ending Jewish racial/religious domination over other peoples.

Rami Khouri contends that the much greater public support throughout the Arab world for Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel and for the United States because it means resistance to their imperial designs. Khouri does not go further in his predictions, but others do, seeing at least in vague outline the vision of a future in which Israel no longer enjoys ultimate dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living in Britain, a jazz musician and thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what he calls global Zionism, by which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It is the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says, who are "at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel and the U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans and Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the Zionist/neocon bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an historic event" and a "dead entity."

Many others see similar visions. Commentators increasingly discuss the possibility of Israel, its myth of invincibility having been deflated, going through a South Africa-like epiphany, in which its leadership somehow recognizes the error of its racist ways and in a surge of humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities and agrees that Jews and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary state. British MP George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the possibility of "an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its international backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass of opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously invincible minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power on the basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable. Short of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway ­ along with many others -- sees only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads."

This increasingly appears to be the shape of the future: either Israel and its neocon supporters in the United States can dismantle Zionism's most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary state in Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is, or the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable now.

Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be destroyed by the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before their expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting the Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial sense, Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is justice and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately defeating Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on the condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror, or finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which no people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent on imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on another Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked in Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.

We have reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by Israel, Bush, and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate, only they may be strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world that lies on the other side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable. Justice can ultimately prevail.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison09122006.html

EDITORS: this comment is a retort to the comment "Zionism is Racism" at Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006 at 10:11 PM which you've left up, so I'll keep reposting this comment.

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1. Accusing Israel of "Apartheid"

Definition of APARTHEID: "An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against non-whites by the white minority."

Israel's policy toward the so-called "Palestinians" is also being called "apartheid," a crime against humanity and a form of genocide. Let's take a look at this so-called" apartheid" within Israel. Within Israel today, Jews are a majority, but the large Arab minority (23% of Israel's total population) are full citizens with voting rights and representation in the government. Under the former South African apartheid system, black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they were the overwhelming majority of the population. There is still some degree of discrimination within Israel. Although Jews are an 80% majority, Israel's Arab citizens have more political rights than any Arabs in the entire Middle East. Whatever grievances the Israeli-Arab citizens may have, they are still economically better off than the majority of their fellows in virtually every other Arab country. If they still face inequality it is because of the mutual hostility and mistrust between both communities, not because of any apartheid type racial policy.

The situation for Arab "Palestinians" in the disputed [West Bank and Gaza] territories, won by Israel in the 1967 defensive war won against three surrounding Arab armies, is different. Israel has very real security concerns. successive violent insurrections [Intifadas] in these territories, have forced Israel to impose restrictions on the Arab residents. The Arab "Palestinians" in the territories dispute Israel’s right to exist whereas South Africa's blacks never sought the destruction of South Africa.

Up until September 2000, when the Arab Palestinians from the [West Bank and Gaza] territories began their second violent "Intifada" and unleashed their non-stop Jew-killing, suicide bombing spree, they had been allowed to work inside Israel Proper and receive similar pay and benefits as did their Jewish counterparts. They were also allowed to attend schools and universities (which Israel built for them!). "Palestinians" were also given opportunities to run many of their own affairs. None of this was true for South African blacks.

Israeli Muslims, Christians, Druse and many other minority ethnic groups enjoy exactly the same civil and political rights as Jews. They have proportional Knesset representation, say what they like, go where they like, pray where they like, go into business, be elected to office and serve in the Cabinet. The first Middle East country to grant Arab women the right to vote was Israel! And nowhere else in the Middle East is there a democracy where the word "vote" has any real meaning! The only exception is that Israeli Arabs do not serve in the army.

There is nothing more hypercritical than a single one of the 64 Arab/Islamic/Muslim theocracies and brutal dictatorships pronouncing judgment on issues relating to "discrimination" since not a single one among them treats their minorities in the same tolerant way as does Israel. In fact, Jews and Christians are not even allowed into most of these countries! Compared to all Arab/Islamic/Muslim countries, Israel sets the gold standard!

As for Israel's "racially based" Law of Return," this policy has nothing to do with race and is based solely on religious affiliation. If it were racist, why did Israel airlift 42,000 BLACK Ethiopian Jews between 1984 and 1991? In anything, that airlift marked the only time in history when blacks were systematically moved from one country to another while NOT in chains! Jordan (the first Arab "Palestinian" state) introduced its own law of return in 1954 for all former non-Jewish residents of Palestine. Yet when Israel did precisely the same thing for Jews, it suddenly becomes "racism!" We call this a "double standard!"

Anti-Zionists (modern day disguise of anti-Semites) have leveled other discriminatory charges against Israel regarding the "Palestinian" Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza. Among them are that (1) Israel enforces the use of different color license plates and computerized passes that restrict where West Bank and Gazan Arabs can go and (2) Israel builds "by-pass" roads for "Jews only."

In response to these charges... (1) All Israelis, whether they be Jewish, Christian or Arab, have the same color license plate. Only ["Palestinian"] Arabs living in the disputed territories in Judea-Samaria and Gaza have different colored license plates. This is for security reasons only, especially at border crossings and other security checkpoints. It is not a form of racial profiling as Israel's detractors are implying. This is similar to American and Canadian plates... the only real difference being that hardly any Canadians cross the border with the primary intent of killing Americans!!! (2) By-pass roads were built AROUND Arab areas because too many Jews were being slaughtered by Arabs on roads that went THROUGH Arab areas! They were not built to discriminate against Arabs. Nor were they built to give Jews a smoother ride. They were built to save Jewish lives!

Accusations such as the above are baseless. And who could ever believe that Israel's willingness to even DISCUSS handing over land (won in a war the Arabs started) to form a second independent Arab "Palestinian" state. Most "normal" people would have long ago concluded that the Arafat, the various "Palestinian Authority" sub-groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the average "street Palestinian" psychopaths were never really interested in peace. Yet Israel's decades-long quest for peace, compromise and accommodation with these very same "Palestinians" goes unnoticed and unacknowledged! If anything, it is the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah and all the other Arab "Palestinian" terrorist groups themselves that brought about the Israeli crackdown in the "occupied territories" which led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians... in addition to different colored license plates and by-pass roads for Israelis!

Now another definition... Anti-Zionism: 1. Refusing the Jews their God-given right to return to the land of their forefathers and their faith. 2. Denying the Jews the right to live in Israel in freedom, peace and with human dignity. 3. De-legitimizing the State of Israel and denying it the right to exist. 4. Demanding a Jewish exodus... this time OUT of Israel and, preferably, INTO the Mediterranean Sea. 5. Wishing to erase the State of Israel from the map and ethnically cleanse the Arab Middle East of its "stinking Jews!"

Definition of Chutzpah (Nerve): The Saudi Ambassador to the UN, Fawzi Shobokshi, called Israel a "racist, terrorist state." Yet Israel has 24% non-Jewish citizens while Saudi Arabia has no Jews and no Christians... only Moslems! So which is the racist State? Also, no Israelis flew planes into the World Trade Center Towers while 15 of the 19 Arab terrorists who DID were Saudis! Talk about Deception, Denial and Deflection of Guilt! This is Chutzpah AND typical Arab propaganda against Israel.Contrary to myth and propaganda, Israel is not an apartheid state. The largest practitioner of apartheid in the world is Islam, which practices both gender and religious apartheid. Those who accuse Israel of Apartheid are the true practitioners of Apartheid!

RACISM?

Israel's multi-racial society belies the charge of Racism. More than 100 different countries of the world are represented in the population of Israel. Consider how the Israeli government spent tens of millions of dollars airlifting more than 40,000 black Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984 and 1991. Since 2001 Israel has reached out to help others taking in non-Jewish refugees from Lebanon, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Liberia, Congo and even Bosnian Muslims. How many such refugees have the 22 states in the Arab league taken in? The Arab world won't even give Palestinian refugees citizenship in their host countries!

Over one million Arabs are full Israel citizens. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arab political parties expressing views inimical to the State of Israel sitting in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Not a single one of the 22 Arab nations has a Jew in its government! Women are equal partners in Israel and have complete human rights. The truth is that Arab nations are the real racist and oppressive states.

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2. Accusing Israel of "Ethnic Cleansing"
and "Genocide"

Turning the history of the Jews against them is another commonplace of anti-Semitism. If the Jews were victims in an actual genocide, then what better way to transfer sympathy from them to their rivals than by painting the Jews as modern Nazis perpetuating a new holocaust... this time against the poo' poo' "Palestinians."

Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior. The Israelis... who employed a third of the Arab "Palestinian" population within Israel Proper, armed Arafat and his Palestinian Authority and even offered Yasser Arafat a state consisting of 95 percent of the disputed territory... were hardly practicing genocide! Israel, however, is now sustaining a war for its own existence. A nation defending its citizens against Arab terrorist bombings, mortar assaults, sniper attacks, and a military and diplomatic onslaught by an array of Arab foes is practicing survival, not genocide.

The 1,200,000 Arab "Palestinians" whose parents and grandparents opted for Israeli citizenship in 1948 now have a life inside Israel. Despite their constant bitching and their seeming support for their "Palestinian" kin to destroy Israel, they have no intention whatsoever of leaving Israel for Arafat’s Palestinian State if, or when, it is declared. If anything, they are popping out Israeli-Arab babies in such high numbers that Israel will demographically no longer BE a Jewish State by the year 2030! Despite their perceived problems with Israel, the Israeli Arabs still like it there.

Arabs and other religious minorities enjoy FULL freedom of their religion in Israel. In addition, Israel pays for Arab education, in the latter’s own language, in their own schools AND in schools built by Israeli taxes. Israeli Arab primary, secondary and university students have the right to teach hatred of the Jews, also at Israeli taxpayer expense!

They vote in Israel's elections and even have Israeli-Arab Knesset members. Free democratic elections such as this cannot even be imagined in any one of the 22 countries of the Arab League nor in any of the forty-four Muslim nations throughout Africa and Asia. However, should any of these Arab citizens of the Jewish State [Israel] wish to move, we at Masada2000.org would wholeheartedly encourage them to do so! After all, "No Arabs - No Terror!"

Israel heavily subsidizes the health of all its Arab citizens equally with that of Jews and other minority groups. Whether they be clinics, hospitals or homes for the aged, all Israeli citizens have access to one of the highest standards of medicine in the world. Monthly subsidies also go to parents of large families (unfortunately, Arabs have the largest families!). And get this.... recently, when an Israeli-Arab man blew himself up taking a number of innocent Israelis with him, his family began receiving welfare checks from the government since they were now without a breadwinner! Is THIS what they call "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing?" If so, then ALL countries should adopt policies of "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing!"

On the other hand, the Arab/Muslim/Islamic nations who are Israel's accusers are the REAL ethnic cleansing "specialists." For example, Jews cannot vote in Saudi Arabia because the Saudis have ethnically cleansed their land of Jews and all other non-Muslims... except, of course, when they need American soldiers to drive out the likes of Saddam Hussein. Then the Saudis are more than willing to have non-Muslims die in the service of Islam!

The oil-wealthy Kuwait also doesn’t allow their Jewish citizens freedom of religion or education. They don’t have to. They have no Jewish citizens. Jews and all other non-Muslims are forbidden in their Muslim-only paradise. As with the Saudis, the only exception is when it's time to send American soldiers to protect them.

Jews in Jordan do not enjoy the same rights or facilities because Jordan also has no Jews. Their ethnic cleansing policies do not permit Jews to defile the purity of their Arab country. These same policies are standard fare in all Arab/Muslim/Islamic countries. These same 1.4 BILLION voices who daily cry out for "rights of self-determination" for the poo' poo' Arab "Palestinians" deny this same "right of self-determination" for the five million Jews of tiny Israel.

And what about Jewish education or religion in the Arab Emirates, Syria, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Bahrain or any of the other Arab/Muslim/Islamic countries? Not to worry. There are no Jewish education or Jewish religious freedom to worship issues because Jews dare not even visit, let alone live there.

What happened to the ancient Jewish communities of Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen? They all had their land and possessions taken from them and were driven out (or killed) by their Arab/Muslim/Islamic hosts... a case of REAL "ethnic cleansing!" While Israelis (formerly, the Jewish "Palestinians") were fighting their 1948-9 defensive War of Independence against five invading Arab armies, nearly 900,000 Jews were murdered or driven out (ethnically cleansed) from many of the surrounding 22 Arab countries. These Jews were as much victims of aggression as the Arab "Palestinians" in 1948-9 and again in 1967. In fact, the Jewish refugees were more a victim population since they were driven out by persecution. Those Jews were not involved in a war against the Arab populations in any of those 22 countries!

Finally, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics just published the total Arab "Palestinian" populations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It has grown from 1.1 million in 1967 (when Israel began "occupying" these territories) up to over 3.5 million. Does this population explosion sound like "ethnic cleansing and genocide" to you!

Conclusion: Don’t hold up the crime of Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide against the People of Israel!

More on Ethnic Cleansing

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3. Accusing Israel of "Occupying" Arab Land

West Bank settlements [more properly called "Jewish communities of Judea-Samaria"] account for 2% of the land of the West Bank. In 35 years of rule, the Israelis have put 2% of the territory under the ownership of settlements. If we project that trend forward, it would take 1,750 years for the settlers to control all of the West Bank. Yet we are told this is the crux of the problem.

To call the Israeli presence in THEIR OWN ancient homeland an "occupation," is ridiculous. An occupation of what? There was never an Arab "Palestinian" nation or people there before. There are no "Palestinians." They are a made-up people for the sole purpose of political propaganda! They have no separate culture, language, or country of their own; even their leader -- Arafat -- is EGYPTIAN!! He later moved to Jerusalem. If anything, Arafat is an "illegal occupier" and "illegal settler!"

Indeed, most of the Arabs living within the borders of Israel today have come from some other Arab country at some time in their life. They are all "settlers." Since 1967, the Arabs have built 261 settlements in Judea-Samaria and Gaza. We don't hear much about those Arab settlements. We hear instead about the number of Jewish settlements that have been created. We hear how destabilizing they are – how provocative they are. Yet, by comparison, only 144 Jewish settlements have been built since 1967,

If there is an occupation, it would have to be the Arab occupation of Jewish historical land! Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") for over 3,500 years. The only time Jews have been prohibited from living there was during Jordan's 19 year rule from 1948 to 1967. At best, the Arabs are desert wanderers and squatters. They are not "Palestinians." They are simply ARABS!

In truth, Jews choosing to live in the Judea-Samaria and Gaza are pioneers. They are returning to live in the heartland of Israel, the place which served as the cradle of Western civilization and the Jewish religion. These areas which Jews refer to by their original names of Judea, Samaria and Gaza were the scene of much of the drama described in the Bible. It is the place where King David walked and where the prophets of Israel gave the world a vision of peace and brotherhood. Ancient synagogues and archaeological sites attest to the long-standing Jewish presence in the region, a presence that is once again flourishing despite Arab opposition and terror.

Moreover, Israel did not “occupy” these territories, as the Palestinians and others would have you believe. The Kingdom of Jordan illegally "occupied" Judea-Samaria from 1948-67 following the first Arab war upon Israel. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Arab armies massed on Israel’s narrow borders, vowing to destroy the Jewish state. In a war of self-defense, Israel succeeded in overcoming its enemies and, in the process, "liberated" Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Under international law, territories are considered “occupied” only when they are taken in an act of aggression... something which clearly does not apply to Israel since the 1967 war was a defensive war.

It was 37 years ago that Israel prevailed in the 1967 war, returning to places such as Hebron, Jericho and Shilo. For two thousand uninterrupted years, Jews had lived in the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried. Only in 1929, when local Arabs massacred them, was the Jewish community forced to flee the city. What could be more historically just than to rebuild the Jewish presence there?

One must also recall that prior to the beginning of the Jewish return and reclamation of their ancient homeland in the 1880s, there were BOTH Arab "Palestinians" and Jewish "Palestinians" living there. Neither group had a particularly significant numbers after centuries during which the land was ignore and neglected. Once the Jews began their Zionist movement to reclaim, beautify and resettle the land, Arabs from surrounding Arab areas also began returning. Unlike the early Jewish settlers who were willing to live in peace and share land, the incoming Arabs were bent on sharing nothing! The Arab motto then is exactly what it is now 120 years later... "we will shed every last drop of blood for every last grain of [what THEY consider] Arab land!"

The so-called "Israeli settlements" in the Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the "West Bank") and Gaza have been blamed for all the Arab-Israeli ["Palestinian"-Israeli] conflict when, in Truth, these settlements were the result of a war brought to Israel BY these very same Arabs! The "West Bank" territories from which Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, the Gaza Strip territory from which the Egyptian Army attacked Israel in 1967 and the Golan Heights from which Syria attack Israel in 1967 are today's so-called "Israeli occupied territories." Had these Arab nations not threatened to destroy Israel in June of 1967, there would be no Israeli "settlers" on these "occupied territories!" Have you ever heard of the expression, "To the Victor Goes the Spoils of War?" This would seem especially justified when the victor was attacked! Incredibly, "Israeli aggression" and "Israeli occupation" is what the Arab world now claims is the reason why there is no peace!

The Muslim/ Islamic world is greatly oppressed but it comes not from tiny Israel or from the giant United States. The oppression comes from the Islamic world's own tyrannical, NON-democratic leaders, most of whom act as if they have a divine right to govern for life! The answer to this problem is not creating more illegitimate Arab and Muslim dictatorships and theocracies. And certainly not by creating a second Arab "Palestinian" state (Jordan being the first), a 23rd Arab-Muslim state and most definitely NOT by creating a terror Arab-Muslim state with a madman like Arafat at the helm!

Jews and Christians are the indigenous people of the Middle East in what is now referred to as Israel, Judea-Samaria and Gaza. Here Judaism and Christianity flourished for centuries BEFORE Islam even became a religion. It is Islam that is the "new-comer, the invader, the squatter, the illegal occupier... for Islam (and the first Muslim) never appeared before 622AD. The Christians had already been there for six centuries, the Jews for over FIFTY centuries!

Don't fall prey to the myth that the Arabs are merely seeking an end to "occupation" and "humiliation." If the Arabs truly desired peace and liberty, they could have achieved it years ago. They crave the destruction of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel! That supersedes all other of their concerns.

Biblically Speaking...

The Palestinians claim that the land of Israel has belonged to them "from time immemorial." The Palestinian Authority (PA) claims that the entirety of Israel is "occupied" territory. We know what the Palestinians say. But what does G-D say? What does the BIBLE say about the land?

GENESIS 15:18-21: In that day the Lord made a covenant with Avram (Abraham), saying, "To your seed I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the Great River [referring to the Euphrates River which, during the reigns of kings David and Soloman, formed the northeast boundary of the Promised Land]

NUMBERS 34:1-12: And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land of Canaan...

GENESIS 17: 7-8 And I will establish my covenant between ME and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a G-D unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and thy seed after thee, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Caanan,

There is nothing in the Koran which says the Land of Caanan (Israel) belongs to Muslims! Even the term "Palestine" is never mentioned there! So if anyone is "occupying" the Land of Israel, it is the Arabs.

4. Accusing Israel of Starting the June 6, 1967 War
Resulting in the "Occupation" of 'West Bank," Gaza,
East Jerusalem, the Sinai Desert and the Golan Heights.

The Arabs say the Israelis grabbed this real estate in a war of aggression in 1967. In fact, Israel did not start that war. Israel did not want that war. Israel merely defended itself – very, very effectively – from coordinated attacks by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Arafat's terrorists.

This is not opinion. This is fact. Here is what newspapers were reporting about the crisis before June 5, 1967 – before there was any alleged "Israeli occupation." Here' is the month-long timeline leading up to the Six-Day War:


On May 7, the New York Times reported Syria had shelled the Israeli village of Ein Gev.

On May 17, the New York Times reported that the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Arafat, pledged to "keep sending commandos" into Israel.

On May 19, the Los Angeles Times reported Egypt stood accused of using poison gas in Yemen.

On May 19, the New York Times reported Egypt had deployed its forces along the Israeli border.

On May 20, the New York Times reported Egypt forced U.N. peacekeeping troops to leave the Sinai Desert in anticipation of its attack on Israel.

On May 21, the New York Times reported Egyptian soldiers were massing in the Sinai.

On May 22, the New York Times reported that the PLO would be stepping up its attacks in Israel, that Cairo was calling up 10,000 reserves and that Iraq would be sending aid to battle Israel.

On May 23, every newspaper in the world reported that Egypt took the provocative action of closing the Gulf of Aqaba to Israel.

On May 24, every newspaper in the world reported that the U.S. declared Egypt's military blockade of the gulf "illegal."

On May 25, the New York Times reported that Jordan would admit Saudi and Iraqi forces into its country to do battle with Israel.

On May 27, every newspaper in the world reported Egypt's fiery threats to destroy Israel.

On May 29, the New York Times reported the Egyptian buildup of military forces in the Sinai was continuing.

On May 29, the Washington Post reported that despite all of this provocation, Israel was still reluctant to have a showdown with its enemies.

On May 29, the New York Times reported new Syrian attacks on Israel.

On June 3, the New York Times reported that Britain declared the Egyptian blockade could lead to war. It also reported that four Syrian commandos were intercepted in Israel.

On June 5, 1967, the Six-Day War began. Israel rolled up all of its enemies faster than anyone would have believed. It took control of East Jerusalem from Jordan. It took control of Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River from Jordan. It took control of the Golan Heights from Syria. And it took control of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Desert from Egypt.
You can read these news reports for yourself thanks to the work of Sol Jacobs.

Clearly, the so-called "occupation" of these territories came about as a result of Arab war-making on Israel. Israel merely defended itself well. Israel also proved it was willing to give these territories back to neighbors who would live in peace with the Jewish state, as demonstrated with the return of the Sinai to Egypt.

All of this raises a few questions: If Israel is occupying those territories today, who was occupying them until 1967? If the West Bank and Gaza belong to "Palestinians," why were they under the control of Jordan and Egypt until June 5, 1967? If Arab "Palestinians" just want their own state, why didn't they ask for it before 1967?

See http://masada2000.org/historical.html more maps relating to the above.

.

5. Accusing Israel of Having "Illegal Settlements"
In Judea-Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza

Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are not illegal under any international law.

In 1948, when the British Government partitioned Israel, they offered the Jews certain land, and the Arabs certain land. The Arabs never agreed, and instead attacked Israel. Therefore, Israel is not violating any agreements.

The last binding international legal instrument in the West Bank and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the British Mandate.

None of the signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinians restrict the building or expansion of settlements. Indeed, the issue of settlements is specifically noted as an issue that will only be discussed during final status negotiations, the final stage of the peace process. The only prohibition in these agreements is that neither side take steps to change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, such as unilateral declarations of statehood or annexation, prior to final status negotiations. The Israeli Government has voluntarily frozen the building of new settlements, dismantled some (very important) but recognizes the needs of existing settlements to meet the changing needs of their residents, such as the expansion of existing homes to accommodate growing families.

The official U.S. position has been over the years that settlements are legal. The Carter administration for a short time held that settlements were illegal, a position overturned by the Reagan administration.

The Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to settlements even though you will often hear the claim that it does. Israel took over the land in a defensive war in 1967 from rulers (Jordan, Egypt) who themselves had recently acquired control of the land by aggressive war. The only internationally recognized agreements are those of the Oslo process which do not in any sentence prohibit settlements. At some points in time Israel has voluntarily agreed to a temporary halt to new settlements in anticipation of negotiating breakthroughs. But the repeated reversion to terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs has ended such restraint. The endlessly repeated refrain about "occupied territories" is propaganda, since (a) the territories never belonged to Palestinian Arabs, (b) the Palestinian Authority was given control of the areas and (c) the only reason Israel continues to exert control is in reaction to Palestinian Arab violence.


5. Accusing Israel of Nazi-Like Behavior



The Arab Palestinians have reached a point where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews. Plainly put, their main goal today is not statehood, but genocide! Killing Jews actually makes them happy... so happy that they are even willing to detonate their own children in order to murder Jews! This irrational, street level barbarism would make Hitler's Storm Troopers seem like gentlemen!

What is needed is a thorough "de-Nazification" of Palestinian society not unlike what was imposed upon post WWII Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, this gut hatred of Jews and Israel has been inculcated into Arab societies so completely and far too long. This leaves Israel with only two choices. Victim or Victor.


BASIC TRUTHS

1. The only reason people challenge the legitimacy of Israel, rationalize aggression against Israel and justify Arab atrocities, is that they hate Jews.

2. The media campaign against Israel is based on the fact that the Western TV stations, newspapers and radio stations involved are uneducated and/or anti-Semitic.

3. Those who support the Arab "Palestinians" don't really give a rat's ____ about the Arab "Palestinians." They simply hate Jews.

4. "Anti-Zionists" are still anti-Semites at heart. They merely mask their hatred of the Jewish people with a geo-political agenda.

5. The Jewish Left is the main threat to Jewish survival and Jewish existence, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. It is the Jewish SELF-HATING Left that prevents Israel from being able to deal with attacks upon the nation. It is the Jewish Left that rationalizes and legitimizes anti-Semites/anti-Zionists and implicitly joins them by blaming everything on the Jews.

6. Every concession or goodwill gesture to Arabs encourages Arab violence and aggression. It also encourages more open manifestation of anti-Semitism among the public in the West and in their media once they smell Jewish blood or Jewish in-fighting.

7. The anti-Israel lobbies will attack and attempt to de-legitimize Israel no matter what Israel does, no matter how many suicidal concessions she makes and no matter which Israeli political party rules the country.

8. Killing Arabs reduces Arab violence and aggression while dialogue with Arabs encourages Arab violence and aggression. The Arabs respect forces of strength, not cowardly appeasement. Don't accuse us of "Arab bashing." This is simply a fact.

9. Nothing has changed. If the Arabs were to perpetrate a new genocide against the Jews, the Western world would explain it as having been caused by Jewish shortcomings and sins. The Jews would simply build a few more Holocaust museums, light a few more candles and once again swear "Never Again!"



Muslim leaders in general are well-versed in the Arab art of ingratiation and know how to beguile Western journalists, diplomats and politicians. The latter sees no cultural or ideological reason why Jews and Arabs cannot live together in genuine peace and harmony... even in this era of resurgent Islam. Lacking in even a basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history, the recipients of this Arab and Islamic propaganda fail to understand one most crucial fact. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 negates the prophecy of Mohammed, undermines the authority of the Koran and thereby challenges the actual validity of the Islamic religion. In addition, Muslims look upon Israel as a conduit for a Western democratic lifestyle which they regard not only as decadent, but also as subversive of Islamic values. In other words, Israel's very existence is recognized by Muslims leaders as the greatest threat to the political and religious power structure of the Islamic world. That a tiny Jewish State (with 1/42nd the population, 1/640th the land mass and NONE of the oil) has defeated combined Arab armies five out of five times and has become an economic powerhouse to boot is nearly too much for the Islamic Faith to endure. Military action has failed to destroy Israel. The name of the game now is to de-legitimize Israel through a determined, well-financed and unremitting propaganda campaign unmatched even by the Nazis!

What "Jewish world" are you referring to?

Where in that post does it talk about "the Jewish World"?

>the Moslem world has declatred all of "Palestine, from the river to the sea to be a Moslem Wakf."

The Zionists have declared it to be "Jewish land."

What's the difference?

That other line of bullshit got nuked, so they just LEAP FOR A NEW RATHOLE

>Over 850,000 Jews were kicked out of Arab and Muslim lands in the last few generations because

the depredations of the Zionists have caused more hatred of jews than Hitler ever dreamed of.


>the Zionists are willing to share their land.

(1.) Tell that to their victims, banished and forbidden to return.

(2.) The are willing to let willing servents live within walking distance of their jobs.

(3.) It's not "their" land. It belongs to all who live there equally. No one group, particularly armed invaders, has the right to rule the other groups by virtue of their lineage.

For this point to fly...

"...if the Arabs hadn't ridden into Israel as conquerors and invaders..."

...you have to address THIS point:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/182259_comment.php#183671

But you don't seem to be able to...

1400+ years ago, hardly ANY group was where they are today. Nobody else could get away with brazen land theft based on such a ridiculous argument. What gives YOU special rights?

is there any forms of life out there?

Uh-huh. I WASTED that shit already, Yiddo. Where were you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh PUKE! Not Ziff again
by TW Sunday, Oct. 01, 2006 at 5:36 PM

William B. Ziff was a New York media mogul of the 1930s and -- needless to say -- a bug-eyed zionist fanatic, probably the first pro-Israel propagandist of the modern PR era. This of course is why Tia thinks he's G-d. His book is a cherry-picked extravaganza of everything anybody ever said in favor of Jewish land theft in the Middle east as of the mid-1930s.

Tia flops around on the floor sliming her panties every time she talks about this guy's "spectacular scholarship." Here's her favorite passage:

from http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2006/09/18872.php :
"Dr. W.E. Blackstone, quoting the foremost authorities on international law, pointed out in 1891 that since the Jews never gave up their title to Palestine, the general "law of dereliction" could not hold in in their case; "for they never abandoned the land. They made no treaty; they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans...and were captured or enslaved...Since then, having no sovereign nor political head through whom they could speak, they have disputed the possession of their land by continued protest through their literature and their public and private worship..."

Tia chimes in:
"Blackstone ... points out that according to the logical precedents established by such authorities as Buswell, Wheaton, Clifford, Phillimore and others, "the forcible manner by which Israel has been kept out of the land, with no means of redress, is equivalent in principle to a continued state of war..."

"The greatest legal authorities have agreed that according to the foundation principles of international law there is no basis for prescription against Israel... therefore THE JEWS HAVE A VALID CLAIM ON PALESTINE AS LONG AS THERE IS A SINGLE ZIONIST ALIVE"



And *who* is Ziff's (and Tia's) "impeccable" source on this, you ask? Why surely it must be a diplomat or a professional scholar on international law, or... or... at least a LAWYER, fer chrissake.

Nyupe.

It turns out "Dr. W.E. Blackstone" is none other than the Reverend William Eugene Blackstone, a Chicago METHODIST MINISTER of the late 1800s who was the most prominent CHRISTIAN ZIONIST holy-rolling moonbat ding-a-ling of his day. For those who don't know, this means he wanted God to come down and use The Holy Laser Beam to vaporize everybody he didn't like, and he thought the way to bring this about was for the Jews to return to Israel (per John Nelson Darby, the original Christian zionist shit-for-brains).

And this passage...

"Blackstone ... points out that according to the logical precedents established by such authorities as Buswell, Wheaton, Clifford, Phillimore and others..."

...reveals that the "definitive legal interpretation" in question is BLACKSTONE'S OWN!

This is exactly like quoting Pat Robertson as an "impeccable authority" on the Jews' legal right to Israel!

It's so deliciously typical of the zionists' position on EVERYTHING. When you dig into it you discover it's bullshit built on bullshit built on bullshit going back to the dawn of time

Blackstone was a Christian Zionist PREACHER stumping for Israel in the 1890s. This does not qualify him to deliver "definitive" LEGAL opinions, in fact it raises strong suspicions about his impartiality. So you're saying he was qualified to say such things? Okay...

PROVE IT

Uh, the holes in Blackstone's legal logic are not to be found in "Rape," dumb-head. Here's Ziff's reference for the claims he attributes to Blackstone

William Blackstone, "May the United States Intercede for the Jews", One Day Vol 8, # 46 October 1891

And NO, I'm not going to go through all the interlibrary loan bullshit to get this and then write a Master's thesis on 19th century international law just to rebutt this stupid zio-claptrap article for you. I'm not yer fuckin monkey. Besides, I DON'T NEED TO to justify my suspicion that Blackstone's just a melodramatic manipulative lying peessashit. After all, he's BOTH a fire'n'brimstone preacher-man AND a zionist, so right there the probability comes in at 99.999999++ percent

HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW
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Who gives a shit? They tell boohoo stories about EVERY period of their history, including the present. Personally, I'm through taking their word for ANY of it. At one time I gave them as much benefit of the doubt as anybody, but having caught them telling one boohoo lie after another for the past five years, that's over forever, and for this they have no one to thank but themselves. If the Romans were so mean to them, it sure is funny how they IMMEDIATELY began turning up in Rome and later on were very numerous in Constantinople

It figures you'd be all over their boohoo stories. Shit, they taught you ALL your cheap tricks

Do you know Koine so as to read texts like the New Testament in the original, Locksley?

Get it here:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=182259

Gone in 60 seconds
By Amira Hass

Sitting in the parking lot of the apartment house in Nablus' Rafidia neighborhood was a big clean white 2006 Mazda, without a scratch on it. With a yellow license plate - meaning the car was from Israel. Whose car is it? What is it doing here? In Nablus these are reasonable questions to ask. The entry of Israelis into the city, under siege these past six years, is prohibited. And anyway, only a few hundred cars are legally permitted to be here.

By a process of elimination, the visitor soon reaches the conclusion that it is a stolen car. A conversation with two car thieves in Nablus two days earlier, and an intensive study tour with a taxi driver named Yakoub on the subject of the origin of cars in the city, made it easy to categorize the Mazda. Two small posters taped to the front and back windshields of the car also helped: one was of a shaheed [martyr] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the other of Yasser Arafat. This is not a car that is about to attempt passage through the Israel Defense Forces checkpoints that besiege Nablus. Nor could it be the car of a member of the city's Samaritan community: they are the only Israelis whose entry into Nablus in their vehicles (which have Israeli license plates) is permitted.

A few hundred Samaritans hold both Israeli citizenship and Palestinian identity cards. They live in a separate neighborhood, up on Mount Gerizim. A checkpoint with four soldiers oversees all traffic in and out. Entry and exit is permitted only to Samaritans, to a handful of other Palestinians living in the same neighborhood, and to workers employed there.

Advertisement

But the riddle remains unsolved: How did this stolen car get into besieged Nablus? And how did the 2007 Audi offered for sale in a respectable office in Nablus five days ago for only NIS 16,000 get in? And how did the approximately 1,100 stolen cars that work as taxis, with their forged plates barely distinguishing them from those of the 2,100 official and legal taxis, get in?

One can only guess. After all, aside from the six checkpoints manned by IDF soldiers, the other access routes into the city have been sealed shut, and danger of arrest or even death lurks for anyone attempting to bypass them.

The two car thieves who agreed to speak with this journalist, only because a driver named Yakoub asked them to, disclosed one method for smuggling while concealing others, volunteered information and then immediately contradicted themselves, hinted that behind every little car thief, there was a big boss, but refused to elaborate on the subject. Yakoub says that the mint-condition stolen cars prove they were not smuggled via dirt and gravel paths, but on well-paved roads. But the two car thieves never expressly said so. Nor did they seek to make a national, patriotic issue out of their "work."

The first to arrive at the meeting was Adel, 24, who was also the first to leave "because I have a ton of work" (as the driver of his stolen car). When his friend Munir, 26, showed up a few minutes later, they began to explain - in duet - the nature of their work, all the while spicing their descriptions and explanations with Hebrew slang.

Munir: "If you're interested, within a quarter of an hour I can go and bring you a car from Tel Aviv."

Adel: "When I come in with a car, I don't stop at anything. Not for a tank and not for a bulldozer and not for my grandmother. I just drive."

And how do you steal a car?

Munir: "First I break the window, and remove the computer. I've got my own computer, with a key, and then I immediately start it up."

How long does it take?

Munir: "A minute and a half, tops, and then I'm on easy street. So I make NIS 20,000 in less than 5 minutes."

Adel: "We don't work that way anymore. Now we only work by phone. You get word about someone who wants to hand over his car and then declare it stolen."

How can you enter Israel?

Munir: "Either with a counterfeit ID or by making a huge circuit. It's now 8 P.M., right? By 9:30, I'm in Tel Aviv."

How did you start?

Munir: "I was 19. I worked for a Jew, doing apartment renovations. He paid me NIS 10,000 and still owed me 5,000. When I asked for the balance, he threatened to call the police. He had a Subaru. Should I tell you his name? Moshe. He threatened to call the police. I said okay and walked away, like a good boy. I looked at his car, and decided it would be better to steal it. You don't need a great deal of skill to steal a car. I broke the steering wheel lock, connected wires and just drove home. That was three years ago."

How is it three years ago if you were 19?

Munir: "When I was 19, I began learning how to steal. Now I'm an expert. In five minutes, the car is mine. And I also learned Hebrew. At the beginning I helped thieves - I would tell them where a car was located, after noticing cars whose engines were running. Afterward we learned to work with the code [the immobilizer combination - A.H.].

"Now there's no more work. For the past year, year and a half, all of the roads have been closed. How much time do you need to get to Tel Aviv? An hour? I'm there in half an hour. You go 100 kph, I go 200. Not less. When we enter the West Bank, there's always an escort in front, to check out the territory. Once I was driving in a stolen car, with the yellow plates on. The escort drove in front of me. There was a police checkpoint. They stopped my friends in the escort car, and all their papers were in order. And then they stopped me, and asked me where I was going. 'To my grandmother,' I said. 'In Kedumim?' [a Jewish settlement - A.H.] wondered the policeman. 'Are you Jewish?' I said, 'Yes, but Yemenite.'"

Adel: "Your police are imbeciles."

Munir: "No, not imbeciles. They simply don't know the car is stolen. I was stopped by a soldier at the Beit Iba checkpoint, and he didn't let me go through in my own car, which isn't stolen. I asked him: 'What are you so mad about? You look like a good guy.' As a punishment for having been so impudent, he ordered me to walk to the jora [a cage in which the soldiers detain people for a few hours - A. H.]. I told him: 'I'll go, but try to put yourself in my place. I'm 23, have two kids and a wife. What do you gain from me sitting in the jora for five or six hours? If you gain anything, then okay. But if not, then why do it? And I want there to be peace.' So he says to me, 'This has nothing to do with peace,' but in the end he gave me my ID card and sent me home. I spoke with him in Hebrew."

Adel: "All of the car thieves speak Hebrew."

Munir: "I have friends who gave soldiers or military policemen a little marijuana. You people have one policeman, a real bastard - if he catches you in a stolen car, you pay him NIS 2,000 under the table and he lets you go. He brings in his brother-in-law, who says he is the owner of the car, and then releases the car."

Adel: "If you Israelis dealt with the police, we wouldn't be able to work."

Munir: "Once I wanted to go to Hawara on foot. I am under 35 years old and I am not permitted to pass through. 'Do you smoke?' I asked the soldier. He said yes. I gave him a whole box and asked to be let through. He stuck me in a jora for five hours."

Adel: "You can always find someone who will accept baksheesh to let in a stolen car. Right now I am bringing in a car by telephone. What kind of car do you have? Where is it?"

How do people find you, to steal a car by telephone?

Adel: "You're talking about thieves, not ordinary people. And there are Jews who help. Russian girls."

And what does your family think of your occupation?

Adel: "My mother says that God should help me, and I should bring three cars home. My wife knows, too."

But it's dangerous. You could be shot.

Adel: "My wife thinks I work as a taxi driver."

Munir: "My wife doesn't know and my mother is dead. People around me don't know about it."

And the Palestinian police, what about them?

Adel: "They sit around and don't do anything."

But occasionally there are raids to locate stolen cars.

Adel: "So you put the car in a garage for a few days."

A source in the Palestinian police told me that so long as the IDF doesn't permit Palestinian policemen in Nablus to go around with weapons, they cannot take action against the car thieves. Many of the thieves are linked to the armed organizations or even to certain public figures in the Palestinian security forces.

Have you ever been arrested in Israel?

Adel: "How are we going to be arrested if we are paying them?"

Munir: "They don't know that the car is stolen. And if we are arrested for six months and pay a fine, within a day I cover the sum with a single stolen car."

What do you do when the army invades?

Adel: "I stay home and smoke."

Munir: "I have 40 ID cards."

How many cars have you stolen?

Munir: "It's hard to count. Hundreds. The majority with keys. Sometimes I'd bring seven a day, that's when those that gave me the car also provided a key. And sometimes one car in two or three months. I didn't think I'd be a thief, it's just that they didn't give us any room to breathe, with the intifada."

How much do you pay for a forged ID?

Munir: "NIS 1,000."

What was your most dangerous car theft?

Munir: "It was at 12:30 at night. Two years ago. I was driving in a stolen car. I was still on a road in Israel. In front of me I saw flashing police lights on both sides of the road. I realized they knew that a stolen car was coming, and they'd set up a sort of ambush. I slowed down for a second, as if intending to stop, and then I gave the car full gas and drove at the speed of light. Somehow I managed to hide. Twenty police cars arrived on the scene and searched for me until the morning. In the morning, I put on a different yellow license plate and continued driving. Only when I reached the West Bank did I switch to a Palestinian plate, and got in through one of the checkpoints."

But you need a special permit to enter in a car.

Munir: "I could even convince a rock."

Do you have a boss?

Munir: "I work independently. Alone is the best."

Do you have relatives in Israel?

Munir: "No, I have girlfriends. Girls. Yemenites, Iraqis. It's impossible to know that I am an Arab. Forget the stubble on my face right now. If I shave, within an hour I become a Jew."

When was the last time you stole a car?

Munir: "A year ago. I have two daughters at home. If a soldier shot me tomorrow, what would happen to them?"

You're lying to me a little.

Munir: "Sometimes you have to lie. My Russian girlfriend told me that. Nobody knows who my girlfriend is. She's only a colleague - don't get any ideas. I miss going to Israel. Yeah, not for stealing, but for working, like I used to work. I used to make a lot of money."

So why steal, too?

Munir: "What's the problem, if you can make another NIS 10,000 a week?"

With your expertise with cars, did you help in any way in this intifada?

Munir: "You are talking about terrorists? I was asked to bring in arms, I was asked a million times and I refused."

Do people get paid a lot for smuggling arms?

Munir: "There are Jews who bring weapons in here."

I don't believe you've stopped stealing cars.

Munir: "I've stopped."

I don't believe it.

Munir: "I told you - you have to lie."

Does anyone steal here?

Munir: "Stealing from Arabs? We'd get slaughtered on the spot. I've never ever stolen from Arabs. Besides, where are we going to take the car? Everything is closed in on us. It's impossible to get out."

Gone in 60 seconds
By Amira Hass

Sitting in the parking lot of the apartment house in Nablus' Rafidia neighborhood was a big clean white 2006 Mazda, without a scratch on it. With a yellow license plate - meaning the car was from Israel. Whose car is it? What is it doing here? In Nablus these are reasonable questions to ask. The entry of Israelis into the city, under siege these past six years, is prohibited. And anyway, only a few hundred cars are legally permitted to be here.

By a process of elimination, the visitor soon reaches the conclusion that it is a stolen car. A conversation with two car thieves in Nablus two days earlier, and an intensive study tour with a taxi driver named Yakoub on the subject of the origin of cars in the city, made it easy to categorize the Mazda. Two small posters taped to the front and back windshields of the car also helped: one was of a shaheed [martyr] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the other of Yasser Arafat. This is not a car that is about to attempt passage through the Israel Defense Forces checkpoints that besiege Nablus. Nor could it be the car of a member of the city's Samaritan community: they are the only Israelis whose entry into Nablus in their vehicles (which have Israeli license plates) is permitted.

A few hundred Samaritans hold both Israeli citizenship and Palestinian identity cards. They live in a separate neighborhood, up on Mount Gerizim. A checkpoint with four soldiers oversees all traffic in and out. Entry and exit is permitted only to Samaritans, to a handful of other Palestinians living in the same neighborhood, and to workers employed there.

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But the riddle remains unsolved: How did this stolen car get into besieged Nablus? And how did the 2007 Audi offered for sale in a respectable office in Nablus five days ago for only NIS 16,000 get in? And how did the approximately 1,100 stolen cars that work as taxis, with their forged plates barely distinguishing them from those of the 2,100 official and legal taxis, get in?

One can only guess. After all, aside from the six checkpoints manned by IDF soldiers, the other access routes into the city have been sealed shut, and danger of arrest or even death lurks for anyone attempting to bypass them.

The two car thieves who agreed to speak with this journalist, only because a driver named Yakoub asked them to, disclosed one method for smuggling while concealing others, volunteered information and then immediately contradicted themselves, hinted that behind every little car thief, there was a big boss, but refused to elaborate on the subject. Yakoub says that the mint-condition stolen cars prove they were not smuggled via dirt and gravel paths, but on well-paved roads. But the two car thieves never expressly said so. Nor did they seek to make a national, patriotic issue out of their "work."

The first to arrive at the meeting was Adel, 24, who was also the first to leave "because I have a ton of work" (as the driver of his stolen car). When his friend Munir, 26, showed up a few minutes later, they began to explain - in duet - the nature of their work, all the while spicing their descriptions and explanations with Hebrew slang.

Munir: "If you're interested, within a quarter of an hour I can go and bring you a car from Tel Aviv."

Adel: "When I come in with a car, I don't stop at anything. Not for a tank and not for a bulldozer and not for my grandmother. I just drive."

And how do you steal a car?

Munir: "First I break the window, and remove the computer. I've got my own computer, with a key, and then I immediately start it up."

How long does it take?

Munir: "A minute and a half, tops, and then I'm on easy street. So I make NIS 20,000 in less than 5 minutes."

Adel: "We don't work that way anymore. Now we only work by phone. You get word about someone who wants to hand over his car and then declare it stolen."

How can you enter Israel?

Munir: "Either with a counterfeit ID or by making a huge circuit. It's now 8 P.M., right? By 9:30, I'm in Tel Aviv."

How did you start?

Munir: "I was 19. I worked for a Jew, doing apartment renovations. He paid me NIS 10,000 and still owed me 5,000. When I asked for the balance, he threatened to call the police. He had a Subaru. Should I tell you his name? Moshe. He threatened to call the police. I said okay and walked away, like a good boy. I looked at his car, and decided it would be better to steal it. You don't need a great deal of skill to steal a car. I broke the steering wheel lock, connected wires and just drove home. That was three years ago."

How is it three years ago if you were 19?

Munir: "When I was 19, I began learning how to steal. Now I'm an expert. In five minutes, the car is mine. And I also learned Hebrew. At the beginning I helped thieves - I would tell them where a car was located, after noticing cars whose engines were running. Afterward we learned to work with the code [the immobilizer combination - A.H.].

"Now there's no more work. For the past year, year and a half, all of the roads have been closed. How much time do you need to get to Tel Aviv? An hour? I'm there in half an hour. You go 100 kph, I go 200. Not less. When we enter the West Bank, there's always an escort in front, to check out the territory. Once I was driving in a stolen car, with the yellow plates on. The escort drove in front of me. There was a police checkpoint. They stopped my friends in the escort car, and all their papers were in order. And then they stopped me, and asked me where I was going. 'To my grandmother,' I said. 'In Kedumim?' [a Jewish settlement - A.H.] wondered the policeman. 'Are you Jewish?' I said, 'Yes, but Yemenite.'"

Adel: "Your police are imbeciles."

Munir: "No, not imbeciles. They simply don't know the car is stolen. I was stopped by a soldier at the Beit Iba checkpoint, and he didn't let me go through in my own car, which isn't stolen. I asked him: 'What are you so mad about? You look like a good guy.' As a punishment for having been so impudent, he ordered me to walk to the jora [a cage in which the soldiers detain people for a few hours - A. H.]. I told him: 'I'll go, but try to put yourself in my place. I'm 23, have two kids and a wife. What do you gain from me sitting in the jora for five or six hours? If you gain anything, then okay. But if not, then why do it? And I want there to be peace.' So he says to me, 'This has nothing to do with peace,' but in the end he gave me my ID card and sent me home. I spoke with him in Hebrew."

Adel: "All of the car thieves speak Hebrew."

Munir: "I have friends who gave soldiers or military policemen a little marijuana. You people have one policeman, a real bastard - if he catches you in a stolen car, you pay him NIS 2,000 under the table and he lets you go. He brings in his brother-in-law, who says he is the owner of the car, and then releases the car."

Adel: "If you Israelis dealt with the police, we wouldn't be able to work."

Munir: "Once I wanted to go to Hawara on foot. I am under 35 years old and I am not permitted to pass through. 'Do you smoke?' I asked the soldier. He said yes. I gave him a whole box and asked to be let through. He stuck me in a jora for five hours."

Adel: "You can always find someone who will accept baksheesh to let in a stolen car. Right now I am bringing in a car by telephone. What kind of car do you have? Where is it?"

How do people find you, to steal a car by telephone?

Adel: "You're talking about thieves, not ordinary people. And there are Jews who help. Russian girls."

And what does your family think of your occupation?

Adel: "My mother says that God should help me, and I should bring three cars home. My wife knows, too."

But it's dangerous. You could be shot.

Adel: "My wife thinks I work as a taxi driver."

Munir: "My wife doesn't know and my mother is dead. People around me don't know about it."

And the Palestinian police, what about them?

Adel: "They sit around and don't do anything."

But occasionally there are raids to locate stolen cars.

Adel: "So you put the car in a garage for a few days."

A source in the Palestinian police told me that so long as the IDF doesn't permit Palestinian policemen in Nablus to go around with weapons, they cannot take action against the car thieves. Many of the thieves are linked to the armed organizations or even to certain public figures in the Palestinian security forces.

Have you ever been arrested in Israel?

Adel: "How are we going to be arrested if we are paying them?"

Munir: "They don't know that the car is stolen. And if we are arrested for six months and pay a fine, within a day I cover the sum with a single stolen car."

What do you do when the army invades?

Adel: "I stay home and smoke."

Munir: "I have 40 ID cards."

How many cars have you stolen?

Munir: "It's hard to count. Hundreds. The majority with keys. Sometimes I'd bring seven a day, that's when those that gave me the car also provided a key. And sometimes one car in two or three months. I didn't think I'd be a thief, it's just that they didn't give us any room to breathe, with the intifada."

How much do you pay for a forged ID?

Munir: "NIS 1,000."

What was your most dangerous car theft?

Munir: "It was at 12:30 at night. Two years ago. I was driving in a stolen car. I was still on a road in Israel. In front of me I saw flashing police lights on both sides of the road. I realized they knew that a stolen car was coming, and they'd set up a sort of ambush. I slowed down for a second, as if intending to stop, and then I gave the car full gas and drove at the speed of light. Somehow I managed to hide. Twenty police cars arrived on the scene and searched for me until the morning. In the morning, I put on a different yellow license plate and continued driving. Only when I reached the West Bank did I switch to a Palestinian plate, and got in through one of the checkpoints."

But you need a special permit to enter in a car.

Munir: "I could even convince a rock."

Do you have a boss?

Munir: "I work independently. Alone is the best."

Do you have relatives in Israel?

Munir: "No, I have girlfriends. Girls. Yemenites, Iraqis. It's impossible to know that I am an Arab. Forget the stubble on my face right now. If I shave, within an hour I become a Jew."

When was the last time you stole a car?

Munir: "A year ago. I have two daughters at home. If a soldier shot me tomorrow, what would happen to them?"

You're lying to me a little.

Munir: "Sometimes you have to lie. My Russian girlfriend told me that. Nobody knows who my girlfriend is. She's only a colleague - don't get any ideas. I miss going to Israel. Yeah, not for stealing, but for working, like I used to work. I used to make a lot of money."

So why steal, too?

Munir: "What's the problem, if you can make another NIS 10,000 a week?"

With your expertise with cars, did you help in any way in this intifada?

Munir: "You are talking about terrorists? I was asked to bring in arms, I was asked a million times and I refused."

Do people get paid a lot for smuggling arms?

Munir: "There are Jews who bring weapons in here."

I don't believe you've stopped stealing cars.

Munir: "I've stopped."

I don't believe it.

Munir: "I told you - you have to lie."

Does anyone steal here?

Munir: "Stealing from Arabs? We'd get slaughtered on the spot. I've never ever stolen from Arabs. Besides, where are we going to take the car? Everything is closed in on us. It's impossible to get out."

Here's a great link re: history of Palestine
http://www.palestineremembered.com/OralHistory/Interviews-Listing/Story1151.html