Where did you learn this sort of history? In school? In a church or mosque?
From reading history and eventually, getting a degree in it from university.
Solomon said:
Not only Europeans, but (as I've pointed out previously) the Ottoman Caliphs themselves desired Palestine to become a national home for the Jews.
They had no right to the land either or it's disposition. It belonged to the Arabs who tilled it and called it home.
Solomon said:
Jews were already long-established as residents in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Hebron.
I have no problem with Jews living there, but that is a separate issue from Israel.
Solomon said:
As the Zionist movement took hold, hundreds of thousands of dunams of land were purchased by Jews and Jewish organizations from Arabs.
Thousands of parcels of land were sold by absentee landlords, mostly non-Palestinians. As of 1947 only a tiny portion of what was to become Israel was owned by Jewish settlers.
http://lw.palestineremembered.com/Maps/New/JewishOwnedLandInPalestineAsOf1947.gif
Solomon said:
The establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was seen as part of that process. Under the British Mandate Jewish families were transferred out of Transjordan into Palestine in 1920.
And the British had absolutely no right to do that. It was not their land to parcel out.
Solomon said:
What happened after independence was declared in 1947 is a more complex story; yet if more of the Arabs affected had remained in Palestine rather than depart, Israel would nevertheless be a reality. Much of the Zionist leadership had no desire for the Arabs (many of whom had helped build and defend the Yishuv and moved to Palestine to take advantage of the advanced economy the Jews brought to the area) to leave the Jewish State. Israel is still 20% Arab today.
That may all be true...
but, Israel was still the product of Britain and the United Nations. It may have happened without them, but the fact is that they were the primary cause. Israel was a country largely made up of Europeans, who used partition to declare a country's existence on land that did not belong to them. The world has paid the price for it and will so in the future. After over half a century of continuing conflict do you really see it changing?
Solomon said:
What difference did the Holocaust make? The nations of the world realized that had a Jewish State existed before WWII then six million Jews need not have perished at the hands of a vicious regime and hate-filled people. Clearly, a Jewish State was a necessity, not an option. The homelessness of Europe's few remaining Jews, homeless and languishing in Displaced Persons camps, made establishing the Jewish State a matter of immediate urgency, not something that could be put off any longer, just to satisfy a Britain that was itself tired of playing with Imperialism.
The war created tens of millions of homeless. The guilt of the west's treatment of the Jews was in everyone's minds as the camps were liberated and the trials at Nuremberg convened. The Jews may have even needed a secure home, (although the Nazis had been pretty effectively eradicated), but I still sympathise that they would not trust a future in Europe. OK fine, but that did not give anybody, Jew, European, American, British, or the UN, the right to effectively cause the stripping away of land from their rightful owners,
the Palestinian Arabs, and their subjugation to a state they did not desire, vote for, or wish to live under. That is the kind of injustice, whether done by our country or another, that creates a wound that will not heal. It will never be solved. Both Israelis and Palestinians will pay for that land with their blood from now on, generation after generation.
Solomon said:
That wasn't for lack of trying, as various the various riots against and massacres of Jews celebrated by Arabs makes clear. ("Eyeless in Gaza" even cited a few of these a day or two ago as inspiration.)
Say what you will, the Arabs have been far kinder to the Jews historically than the record of the West and of the Christians...and I am one.
Solomon said:
Once the Ottomans and British departed, most Arab countries (Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, etc.) eventually expelled their remaining Jews and seized their property without compensation, for the benefit of local dictators, of course. Most of these Jews went to Israel.
That is a bit simplistic, but I will grant you that the Jews of the Middle East, after the founding of Israel primarily, were treated much more poorly than what was historically the case, but that rather proves my point of the flood of hatred that over half a century of fighting over this issue has caused.
My caveat to this post is, I do not think there is an easy solution. Now that Israel exist and is the home of so many, nothing can be done to
truly rectify the past. Israel has a right to exist therefore, but unless and until an effective peace can be made with the Arabs, this conflict will lead to an even bigger, and by that I mean
nuclear, disaster.
