Oh, because we all know that if the source is Jewish it’s questionable. :rolleyes:
Anyway, are you saying that the British were irrational to let Jews fleeing the Holocaust go to Palestine? I feel something coming on for the pit.
For hundreds of years Arab Muslims, Arab Christians and Arab Jews lived in peace in Palestine. These Jews spoke Arabic and regarded themselves as part of the Arab culture. The Araqb Christians and Muslims saw it that way too. Trouble began in the late 1800’s when Zionists began entering the country.
In 1880, Arab Palestinians constituted about 95 per cent of the total population of 450,000. By 1946, the total population of Palestine was 1,972,0000 inhabitants, comprising 1,247,000 Palestinians and 608,000 Jews, as well as 16,000 others. UN Doc. A/AC 14/32, 11 November 1947, p. 304). The Jewish population was composed primarily of foreign-born immigrants, originating mostly from Poland, Russia and Central Europe. Only one third of these immigrants had acquired Palestinian citizenship (Government of Palestine, Statistical Abstract, 1944-1945, p. 42).
That was the cause of tension and hostility in the Arab wrold. These immigrant Jews could not speak Arabic and were not part of the Arab culture. Yet these people saw Palestijnhe as theirs and began a campaign of ethnic cleansing and land seizure. One device used was for Zionsts to pool their resources, which included Zionist monies coming in from abroad, and buy tenant farms from absentee landlords. The Arab farmers and their families would then be evicted and driven from the land so that Jewish immigrants could move in. Illegal Zionst settlement were being built on Arab owned land that was simple seized. The settlement were patrolled by armed guards.
Jewish terrorists would go into Arab markets where Arab Jews also shopped and spray kerosene on Arab grown tomatoes. They would assault Arab Jewish women and knock eggs out of their hands that they had purchased from Palestinian Christians and Muslim. They also planted bombs in vegetable carts in crowded Arab markets. In one month in Haifa over 60 people were killed this way and over 150 were wounded and maimed.
In 1948 what the Zionsts were doing to Palestinian non Jew was beyond belief. At 4:30 am on Friday April 9, 1948 Jewish terrorist groups Haganah, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi and the Lohamei Herut Ysra’el began the mass murder of 254 unarmed civilians at the village of Deir Yassin, 10 miles outside of Jerusalem, as they slept in their beds. 254 men women and children were killed. Prior to being killed, the women were raped, their jewelry was stolen.
Jacques de Reynier, an International Red Cross doctor, who arrived on the scene while the killing were going on says that the killings were begun with machine guns, continued with grenades and finished off with knives. Of the women killed, 25 were pregnant and were bayoneted in the stomach while still alive. 52 children were killed in front of their mothers and then their heads were cut off. Bodies of some of the dead children were dumped into wells to poison the water supply. In one of the rooms of what had been a Palestinian home he found piles of genitalia that had been hacked off Palestinian men and boys. (Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu, Neuchatel, 1950)
Zionist apologists claim the attack was made for strategic reasons, that warnings were given by loundspeaker, and that the Jews were attacked and fired upon by the Arab villagers. That is not waht people say who were there. the IDF. For example, one of the Haganah present on the scene was Meir Pa’il who went on to become a colonel in the IDF. For a transcript of an interview with retired IDF Colonel Meir Pa’il, see http://www.jerusalemites.org/Meir.html According to Colonel Meir first in command of the killings was Menachem Begin, 2nd in command was Yitzak Shamir. If tose last two name sound familiar it is because both were later elected Prime Minister of Israel.
That was only the beginning. A few days later, on the night of April 15, contingents from two terrorist groups, Lehi and Irgun entered the village of Naser Al-Din, dressed as Arab soldiers. As the terrorists entered the village, people rushed out to greet them. The terrorists opened fire, killing every one of them. Of the villagers who remained in their homes, only 40 survived. Every house in the village was burned to the ground.
The following month, on May 21, a large contingent of Jewish terrorists from various groups surrounded the village of Beit Daras. The villagers decided that the women and children should leave. As the left the village and tried to flee the area, they were blocked by the by the Zionists, who killed every single one of them.
Two months later, on July 11, after the Israeli 89th Commando Battalion, commanded by Moshe Dayan, had occupied the Palestinian town of Lyda, they made an announcement over loudspeakers. The Palestinians were told that they would be safe if they went into the Dahmash Mosque. In retaliation for a grenade attack, following the surrender of Lyda, which killed several Israeli soldiers, the Commandos killed 80 to 100 Palestinians inside the mosque. Their bodies were made to lie on the floor of the mosque for 10 days, rotting in the summer heat, before the Commandos allowed the people of Lyda to bury them. The Dahmash Mosque still stands, but has not been used since.
Understandably, the events spread fear and panic amongst the citizens of Lydda and nearby Ramle. 60,000 people were ordered by Jewish forces to march to the outskirts of the two towns. They were stripped of all personal possessions. Brigade Commander Yitzhak Rabin ordered them to march 10 to 15 miles to the point where they were met by more soldiers and escorted to refugee camps near Ramallah. Over 350 died of thirst and sunstroke on the way. Many survived by drinking their own urine. Rabin later said that there was no way to avoid the use of force and warning shots in order to make them complete the march. Conditions in the camps were so horrible that manby who had survived the march died in the camps. Yitzak Rabin is another Jewish terrorist who was later elected to the office of Prime Minister.
For a full discussion of the Arab flight from Palestine and its causes see Ronnie E. Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab Jewish Conflict: The Arab Refugee Problem (A case study) Chapter I, Librairie E. Droze, Geneva 1959.
Larry- Yes, the Stern gang and friends did some repugnant things in their day. However, are you asserting that there was no widespread anti-Semitic violence prior to 1948? Perhaps you’re not familiar with Husseini…
Furthermore, here’s some info on Deir Yassin:
Thanks for the link for additional Deir Yassin information. The contention that there were no rapes at Deir Yassin and that no survivors interviewed mention them is just not true.
Here are recollections of some of the survivors:
Mr. Fahimi Zeidan, 12,:“The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the
wall and they started shooting us. I was hit in the side, but most of us
children were saved because we hid behind our parents. The bullets hit my
sister Kadri [four] in the head, my sister Sameh [eight] in the cheek, my
brother Mohammed [seven] in the chest. But all the others with us against the
wall were killed: my father, my mother, my grandfather and grandmother, my
uncles and aunts and some of their children.”
Ms. Haleem Eid, 30: “A man [shot] a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh
who was nine months pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher’s
knife.”
Ms. Naaneh Khalil, 16, saw a man: “take a kind of sword and slash my neighbor
Jamil Hish from head to toe then do the same thing on the steps to my house to
my cousin Fathi.”
Ms. Safiyeh Attiyah, 41: “I screamed but around me other women were being
raped too. Some of the men were so anxious to get our earrings they ripped
our ears to pull them off faster.”
Mr. Mohamed Jaber, student, “The Jews [broke] in, [drove] everybody outside,
put them against the wall and shot them. One of the women was carrying a
three month old baby.”
Um, you only have one witness who claims there were rapes. The others mention murder.
You are forgetting another witness, Dr. de Reynier. He examinedthe bodies of the murdered women. Murder wasn’t all that happended to them. See his book.
Israel’s apologists are skeptical of anything appearing in Arab media, aren’t they? I don’t doubt the figures quoted, but I would have liked to see some from a neutral source.
No, I didn’t say that. I said it would have been irrational for them to suddenly dump a large population with no resources on a small, poor, already populated country.
If you feel this thread needs to go to the Pit, is it because you can’t discuss the real fact of Zionist atrocities without resorting to flaming? If that is the case, perhaps you’d better just withdraw from the discussion.
Okay, so you assert that it would’ve been a bad idea to help lots of Jews escape from the Nazis? If so, that’s what needs to go to the Pit.
Two wrongs make a right, then? What I object to is that Israel and its apologists decry terrorism while sweeping Zionist and Israeli acts of terrorism under the rug.
I think it’s perfectly understandable–note, please, that I say ‘understandable’, not necessarily right–for the Arab nations to have objected to the creation of an explicitly Jewish state in general, and in particular since the road to Israeli nationhood was paved with atrocities. Nevertheless, Israel isn’t going anywhere and I accept that. I believe there should be a free Palestine, though.
My point in this discussion is to put the intifada in perspective against the history of the region while many point fingers and say, “See! those awful Palestinians are all terrorists and whatever we do to them is justified!”
Well then, your point is irrelevant; no one has asserted such a claim in this thread.
Nope. :rolleyes:
sigh So much bigotry couched in historical trapping.
Q & A:
1.) Q - Jerusalem is the #1 ( and essentially only ) Holy City for the Jews. Does that trump being #3 for the Muslims? Or #1 for the Christians?
A - Of course not. In the same vein neither the Christians nor Muslims can claim special priviledges either. It is a city holy to all of the Judeo-Christian religions and one can not parse out which “holy claim” is more important without being a de facto bigot. Claiming special staus under this clause is a non-starter.
Personally I’m of the opinion that none of the parties should get Jerusalem - rather it should be internationalized.
2.) Q What does the Crusades have to do with this modern problem?
A - Nothing. Nada, zilch, zippo. Zero. Once again you cannot claim special status for your religion in the Holy Land to the detriment of anyone else’s ( and yes I don’t acknowledge Jewish religious claims for the region either ). To do so is to be a bigot. Period. The Crusades were a period of Christian aggression ( aimed secondarily at Jews by the way, as the slaughter in the Sack of Jerusalem illustrates ). Were they less aggressive than the original Muslim conquest of the 7th century CE ( or the Is’maili Shi’a Fatimid conquest from the Sunni Buyids/Abbasids )? Not really. Less aggressive than the Roman conquest? Nope. Less aggressive than the Kingdom of Judah’s looting of the treasures of the Temple in Jeruslaem after defeating their co-religionists in the Kingdom of Israel in 8th/9th centry BCE? Not particularly.
Appeals to moral authority based on ancient history are very dubious indeed.
3.) Q - Hey, why didn’t those Zionists help out during the Crusades?
A - Duh. Because their wasn’t any, obviously, seeing as this is a modern philosophy.
As it is the Jews of the time were mostly in diaspora. The Jews still in the Holy Land did indeed do their part in helping the defense of the Holy Land, because thety were tax-paying citizens ( and occasionally civil officers ) of assorted Muslim dynasties. And more than a few unfortunates lost their lives in the process.
Ahistorical diatribes don’t tend to win arguments I’m afraid.
The fact of the matter is what is important is less what has passed, but rather what is. The Israelis and Palestinians are both there. Neither side is going anywhere. You can rage all you like that the Israelis only deserve 6% of the region. But that’s not going to happen. The only thing you can do is deal with reality and try to come up wth an acceptable compromise or live in unreality and watch nothing constructive ever develop.
Personally I’m all in favor of dismantling the settler communities for instance ( but that’s not tremendously likely in the West Bank either, at least as long as Sharon is there - It probably is more likely for the far more limited settlements in Gaza ). But the Palestinian side is going to have make significant concessions as well. That’s reality.
Generally speaking I tend to take up the Palestinian side a little more often on this board, as it tends to have fewer defenders. But comments like some of yours make it difficult.
If you want a set of reasonable ( but certainly debatable ) set of possible compromises, I think Edwino’s points in the “just and viable peace” are at least a reasonable starting point.
Okay, off to go see a fellow about a pig ( really 
).
- Tamerlane
The OP was that the media had a pro-Zionist and pro-Israeli bias and attempted to counter that with the history of Zionist terrorism. So my point is indeed relevant to this thread.
The involvement of the Holocaust is not relevant.
The Holocaust is relevant- we first covered it when talking about Jewish immigration. Furthermore, by associating the allowance of Jews fleeing from the Holocaust as “irrational” you are implying “bad idea.” Usually, irrational has a negative undertone. Thus, it can be interpreted that Jews fleeing to Palestine from persecuters is a bad idea.
You are, I suspect, purposely misunderstanding me in order to bait me into flaming. To this end you will ‘interpret’ anything I say to mean other than what I said. Therefore, I will no longer respond to your posts.
Moderator’s Note: This thread’s opening post consists in large part of someone else’s words, with no indication that this is the case or of anything giving credit to the original author. LarryDL asserts the he was given permission to reproduce those words, unattributed, by someone he asserts is their real author–two assertions we have no way of checking.
I had already previously removed one thread by LarryDL for a less egregious example of plagiarism, in which he at least indicated that he was re-posting someone else’s work, and e-mailed him inviting him to debate the topic using his own words, fair-use quotations from others, and links or other citations to other people’s work. It appears that LarryDL is a slow learner.
I am closing this thread. The rest of you should be able to find plenty of threads around here in which to debate this topic, from all points of view. As for LarryDL, I suspect he will not be posting at the SDMB any more.