Why Did the Arabs Suffer “Nakba” (Disaster) in 1948 and Every Day Since? The Surprising View of the Man Who Coined That Term
Also please read my article “Egypt Et Cetera: When the Moderates are Radicals You’re in Trouble.”
By Barry Rubin
It’s ironic how the West has adopted the narrative of the very people who caused so much disaster in the Middle East. There are two reasons: The ignorance of the Western “experts” and the domination of the radical interpretations that made the mess in the first place.
Here’s a example. In a paper just published by Harvard, somebody named Neil Lewis (where do they find these people to write about Middle East issues who know nothing about them?) argues that the idea the New York Times is biased against Israel is a myth. Not just a partially right or exaggerated claim. Oh, no, it’s completely ridiculous! If anything, he writes, the New York Times–as a radical-controlled British university think tank did a while ago regarding the consistently anti-Israel BBC–is really too biased in favor of Israel! No doubt Mr. Lewis is destined for a fine, well-financed career. Look for his future articles featured in…the New York Times. Oh, wait, what a coincidence! He’s already a New York Times writer! Ah, brave new world that has such people in it!
Isn’t this a conflict of interest? After all, if Lewis criticized the newspaper he would be criticizing himself and his colleagues, even conceivably endangering his future. Who suggested getting a New York Times reporter to analyze the fairness of that newspaper? And yet there is something fitting about it since mass media journalists believe only they can judge the aptness of their coverage. Some decades ago perhaps that was conceivable but in those days there were such things as professional ethics, the belief in the effort to be as objective as possible, the idea that reporting should be to present the news rather than opinion and an ideological agenda, and all those other “old-fashioned” ideas.
Having written scores of specific articles documenting this bias in great detail, I know the Harvard one is one more triumph of ideology over serious scholarship. Some have pointed to the things that Lewis’s paper ignored and twisted but my attention was drawn to a wonderful example of special pleading and historical ignorance so common when it comes to bashing Israel and apologizing for Palestinian intransigence. And there’s a big surprise and irony here that I’ll explain in a moment.
Lewis writes:
“The anniversary of the founding of Israel is an occasion for official joy in the country. But for many Arabs, it is instead commemorated as the `nakba’’ or catastrophe, the time when half the region’s Arab population—estimated at between 700,000 and 800,000—had fled or were driven out. Exactly what happened remains a heated debate.”
“‘Part of the appeal of the term `nakba’ for Arabs is certainly the hope that it may provide some rhetorical and moral counterweight to the emotive terms `Holocaust’ and `Shoah’ (Hebrew for “catastrophe.’’). It has been in use among Arabs since 1949, according to one expert.”
“The word does not, however, make its first appearance in The Times until 1998 in an article that was part of a series examining Israel on its 50th anniversary. `Nakba’ which has become a familiar term on university campuses because of the considerable support in such places for the Palestinian cause, subsequently appears in The Times’s news pages only a few dozen more times.”
Lewis’s footnote about that expert reads: ”The term `nakba’ was used beginning in 1949 by Arabs after it was part of the title of a book by Constantine Zurayk, a professor at the American University of Beirut, said Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.”
Thus, Lewis implies that because it didn’t use the word “nakba” until 1998 that proves the Times was pro-Israel and ignored the Palestinians’ plight. Like so much said about the Arab-Israeli conflict it is remarkable how absurd this argument can shown to be in less than 150 words. Here they are:
Everyone who ever lost a war is unhappy about it and suffered. Does the Times discuss the “nakba” of the Confederacy, the Germans in World War One and Two, the Japanese in World War Two, and so on through every modern conflict? Should it speak of Communists’ mourning at the fall of the Soviet bloc? Lewis implies that the Times never discussed the fact that the Arabs were unhappy they lost in 1948 or that there were Palestinian refugees or that they claimed all of Israel. Every week, perhaps several times a week, for a half century or more this information has been published in the Times. The only thing the Times didn’t do–but has “corrected” for quite some time by using the “nakba” concept–is to present Israel’s creation as a tragedy and to imply Palestinian suffering was totally due to Israeli actions. Finally, Palestinian ”nakba” commemorations are relatively recent, designed by the PA as propaganda exercises. Why recent? Because the PLO would never seek pity from the West but rather presented itself as heroic warriors headed for victory.
But the man who coined the use of the word “nakba” in this context had views quite different from Lewis, the Times, the PA, the campus anti-Israel demonstrators, and the revolutionary Islamists.
Constantine Zurayk was vice-president of the American University of Beirut. His book was entitled The Meaning of the Disaster. Here’s the key passage:
“Seven Arab states declare war on Zionism in Palestine, stop impotent before it and turn on their heels. The representatives of the Arabs deliver fiery speeches in the highest government forums, warning what the Arab states and peoples will do if this or that decision be enacted. Declarations fall like bombs from the mouths of officials at the meetings of the Arab League, but when action becomes necessary, the fire is still and quiet, and steel and iron are rusted and twisted, quick to bend and disintegrate.”
This is the old style of Arab discourse. Zurayk openly acknowledged the Arab states rejected all compromise, made ferocious threats, and invaded the new state of Israel to destroy it. For him, the “nakba” taught that they needed to modernize and democratize their system. Only thoroughgoing reform could fix the shortcomings of the Arabic-speaking world. What happened instead was another 55 years of the same thing, followed by this new era opening last year which will probably also bring a half-century of the same thing. Nakba has become the opposite of what Zurayk wanted it to be: Blaming your opponent rather than acknowledging your own shortcomings and fixing them.
What was a cry for reform and moderation has now become a call for revenge. If the Palestinian Arab forces had not begun preparing to launch war in 1946, led by the mufti, Amin al-Husaini, freshly returned from Berlin where he had been Hitler’s biggest non-European collaborator (details in the new book by myself and Wolfgang Schwanitz coming later this year) and using hidden Nazi-supplied weapons (1942) there would have been no nakba.
Oh, and does the “nakba”–using Zurayk’s own account–compare to the Holocaust murders of six million Jews by the Nazis and their willing collaborators? Well, the Jews didn’t have a state and they didn’t declare war on Germany and invade it with armies, nor did they threaten to wipe Germany off the map, bomb them, and commit genocide on the Germans.
If Arab states had made some compromise either to prevent Israel’s creation through flexible diplomacy or to accept a two-state solution there would have been no nakba.
If the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states had accepted the partition plan in 1947 there would have been no nakba. Instead of mourning Israel’s creation they would have been cheering Palestine’s creation.
The true “nakba” was the rejection of partition that would have created a Palestinian Arab state in 1948. Such a state would have already celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. No 1956, 1967, 1973, or 1982 wars; no refugees; no terrorism. Even today, this point has only been discussed in Arabic by a handful of brave, isolated, and ignored people.
In reality, the nakba resulted from an attempt to destroy Israel and yet is now used as the rationale for continuing to try to destroy Israel.
Yet the nakba concept of which Zurayk wrote was much broader, the Arabic-speaking world’s failure to embrace modernity, science, real democracy, and other such things. In that respect, every day is a nakba and 2011 was not the year of the “Arab Spring” but the year of renewing the nakba strategy. It is a self-inflicted nakba and the victims are the Arabic-speaking people themselves.
Like so much said about the Arab-Israeli conflict it is remarkable how absurd this can be shown to be in less than 150 words. Here they are:
So because a Syrian writer produced a book whose title was ignored by Palestinians until the last few years, the West is guilty for not taking up its title decades before the Palestinians did! And because a liberal modernizer analyzed the defeat as the internal failure of Arab states, this should be to the benefit of nationalist dictators and Islamists who rule these states today.
What did Zurayk think about Zionism and its triumph? Here’s what he wrote:
“The reason for the victory of the Zionists was that the roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life while we for the most part are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future, while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.”
“To dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.” Isn’t that precisely what the Nakba concept is used for today? To say: we cannot make a compromise peace because those horrible Israelis were so mean to us more than 60 years ago. We are victims. We want revenge. We dream of total victory.
And those dreams and that stupefying guarantees failure for the Arabs, and most of all the Palestinians, today.
If Zurayk were alive today he’d be an Arab liberal fighting radical Islamism. Zurayk wanted the Arabs to learn from their mistakes. How does that stand in the context of 2012? How soon will it be before we’re hearing of the Egyptian, Lebanese, Libyan, Syrian, and Tunisian “nakba”? Or how about the Palestinian nakba when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup? One day we might even hear about the multiple “nakba” pattern caused by the refusal of the PLO and PA to make a compromise agreement with Israel leading to a two-state solution and full peace.
PS: Here’s a more serious study of New York Times bias based on actual scholarly criteria.
Barry; Please don’t give these people the benefit of the doubt. Ignorence doesn’t enter into it. They know exactly what the facts are. Anti-semites never allow fact to cloud their judgement. Call them what they are. Jew haters and Israel haters. It seems endemic not just for Muslims, but a must for progressives and liberals. Even Jews of the far left seem to glory in it.
Ignorance does factor into it because the anti-semites are teaching their lies in universities and in the New York Times to a younger generation that has not lived through the past and knows nothing of it other than what they are told, and with rare exceptions these lies are unopposed.
I agree that antisemitism is poorly understood and not generally taught, yet it is one of the most powerful theories of history. I wrote a compilation of the many sides of antisemitism here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/14/the-abcs-of-antisemitism/. And it is true that the leftists I have known would rather assimilate than admit that genteel antisemitism still exists (alongside of the more lethal forms).
Well put Clare!
Since there has been no Jewish equivalent of Europe or a Jewish country other than Israel as an example, I wouldn’t be so quick to start patting backs for not doing something that couldn’t be done anyway. No matter how you lasso it, Muslims are 2nd class citizens in Israel. Yes I know, with good reason. Well, that’s what Europe said. No culture is immune to human foibles.
Maybe second class, but how many Jews are citizens of Muslim countries? And how many sworn enemies are even tolerated in the detested country of the haters much less afforded citizenship of whatever class? Not that I think this is particularly praiseworthy of Israel. It is in fact suicidal.
I could be considered wrong by you Mr. Rubin, but when I think about how Arab states can do, or will do anything, I consider what Islam/Muhammad tells them to do.
In the case of Israel, as you know, anything that was once ruled by Islam, must be taken back, and ruled once agian. Also, that part in the Koran that reads make war with the infidel, and Jews are from monkeys, and pigs should not be forgotten.
Again, there is a supernatural hate for Jews from those of the world. It is once again proven by your above posting Sir.
There is a part of the Bible that reads Israel will be reborn, but not for the sake of Jews. It will be reborn to show G-d keeps his word. After almost 1900 years Israel is now reborn with the Hebrew languge. Never before seen in History has a country been destroyed then reborn like Israel.
Good points all, Leatherneck!
It’s not Arabs or Nakba, it’s ISLAM!
Eradicate islam, all Arabs convert to Christianity or some real religion, not the organized crime syndicate called islam.
Or muslims can just go away.
As always, mr. Rubin makes great points, but I think the following particular argument falls flat:
Does the Times discuss the “nakba” of the Confederacy, the Germans in World War One and Two, the Japanese in World War Two, and so on through every modern conflict? Should it speak of Communists’ mourning at the fall of the Soviet bloc?
To suggest that nyt treats the Palestinians no differently than it would the Soviets, the Germans, or the Confederates, would seem to back up the argument that the Palestinians are the bad guys and that the NYT agrees with that characterization… Thus supporting the argument of a pro-Israel bias (one which I couldn’t agree with less)
have to pay for all this ignorance and — let’s not forget — genocidal hate?
the two-state solution is just a ploy to wipe israel and her jews out of existence. barry rubin should realize this fact and abandon his well-meaning but mistaken support for such a solution.
I agree with No. 5. Why should there be “two states” in what is now Israel? The Arabs have plenty of states, for the so-called “Palestinians” are simply Jew-hating Arabs. Calling Arabs “Palestinians” is history rewrite, an effect of the invention of the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.) in Cairo in 1964 by Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union, both haters of Jews and wanting to destroy Israel.
The name “Palestine” meant “land of the Jews” or “the Holy Land” (since Jesus was a Jew) from the time that the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D., after defeating the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba, changed the name of Judea to “Palestina” in order to eradicate all memory of Judea. He outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina,” his gens name being “Aelius.” “Palestinian” meant “Jew” from that time. Great Britain after World War I was awarded the “Palestine Mandate” to be the “homeland of the Jews.”
Mr Rubin, right here, makes his usual excellent points.
But his applications of common sense and logic and reminders in History apparent for all of the rest of us to see…all, that is….but the Arabs and Islamists…..are bound always to fall upon the deaf ears of the anti-Semites everywhere.
Still, these Historical facts so wilfully ignored and distorted by the Arabs and Islamists still need to be said and emphasized over and over and over again.
And, the NYT probably couldn’t care less about the least of any opposing opinions. They’re like that famous New Yorker cover of some years ago indicating a typical New Yorker’s view of the our Nation…….contracting into nothing as that view approaches the Pacific Ocean.
While we’re at it, I’ve always been puzzled by the use of the term ‘anti-Semite’ as only applying to Jews. Aren’t Arabs Semites also? Arabs, of course, don’t want to hear that.
The whole question of ‘spin’ in and about the Middle East is absolutely Orwellian. There’s no end to it.
Nakba, Nakba!
Who’s there?
Hamas!
Hamas who?
Hamas of genocidal Islamists armed with AK-47s!
Another really excellent Rubin article. I loved your 150 words or less rebuttals, and I love that you dug up the context of this Syrian author and reproduced it for us. It is my memory that there were, in those days, a significant amount more (for lack of a better term) “realistic moderates” among the Arabs.
But as often happens, the extremists (like the Mufti) either threatened them with serious harm, or out and out killed them and did so in a public way to shut up the remaining “moderate Arabs” who (gasp) desired to look inward, or analyze their own society in a frank way. They have all now either been killed off, or the equivalent: permanently shut up. That’s why it’s so enlightening to read these occasional little gems from before so and so was shut up by this dictator or that dictator who used Israel as a convenient mobilizing tool.
My favorite is the letter written by Bashar al-Assad’s grandfather. Then, a notable of the Alawite clan which had become its own “autonomous State of the Alawites” à la France in 1920 but who were now (1936) desperately looking to stave off the new French idea of merging together all the little States (former provinces of the Ottoman Empire) which today make up Syria (excepting Lebanon).
He was writing to the (highly Arabist) French “Foreign Office” or Le Quai d’Orsay begging them to not let the Alawites be left to the mercy of the Muslims. He was rightly scared at the particularly vicious behavior (upheld through all their wars with Israel) of the Syrian Muslims and begged France for protection from being similarly being attacked and slaughtered — even warning them that Muslims put no stock into treaties! This was at a time when Israel had no army, and were using a smattering of rusted WWI Yugoslav rifles. Later they obtained 1, and by that I mean one, singular “cannon” which yes, needed wheels, but was pathetically small — nevertheless it was apparently so shocking to all the Arabs on the other side (it was shuttled with great speed up and down the front) who I suppose thought there may be more, that its arrival would often almost instantaneously turn the battle!
Whether in s formal army or not, the Syrians, and that of course means mostly Syrian Sunnis, committed horrific atrocities towards Jewish civilian doctors and nurses they caught in the Israel both prior to and during the War of Independence, hacking bodies up into parts — and doing this on more than one occasion (another was a group of teenage boys).
The Egyptians and Jordanians (to the extent the latter are a country) never acted like this in any war (at least I’ve yet never read of systemic accounts of this kind of sick behavior). Perhaps this shows the difference between the French “training/influence” versus British “training/influence” (of Egypt and Jordan). Irrespective it is true that the Alawites only had to look at some of these Syrian Arab massacres of Jews to know what was in store for them if they were “merged” with “Greater Syria.”
So that brings me to my Raison d’être, so that I could insert a small portion of the “Assad Letter.” The letter was written in 1936. But, the refreshing bits of actual history one gets from both the paragraphs Rubin quoted from the Syrian author Constantine Zurayk and the paragraphs in which Suleiman al-Assad’s speaks, quite openly, about the Jews, could only have been written in a bygone era.
So (for me) here’s the interesting segment, a direct quotation of the Suleiman al-Assad letter to the French, but with bolding done by me:
[the] good Jews contributed to the Arabs with civilization and peace, scattered gold, and established prosperity in Palestine without harming anyone or taking anything by force, yet the Muslims declared holy war against them and never hesitated in slaughtering their women and children […] [A united Syria] will only mean the enslavement of the Alawite people and the exposure of the minorities to the dangers of death and annihilation. [… The French] may think that it is possible to ensure the rights of the Alawites and the minorities by a treaty. We assure you that treaties have no value in relation to the Islamic mentality…
The author of this paper, Neil A. Lewis, used to write for the NY Times and currently a fellow at the Shorenstein Center. The Center is affiliated with Harvard and is “Dedicated to exploring the intersection of press, politics and public policy in theory and practice.”
To my mind this article is a fine example of establishment liberalism’s intellectual vacuity and moral corruption. Stupidity and opportunism wrapped into a foetid little package.
To clarify, I was referring to Lewis’s article as ‘a foetid little package,’ not Mr. Rubin’s.
Bottom line: the lack of a Palestinian state is 100% the fault of Arabs, 0% the fault of Jews or Israel. Of course anyone familiar with the history knows this, but thanks to the double-dealing of the MSM very few people reading their propagandistic “journalism” are aware of this basic fact.
This is one more, of so many, interesting Rubin article.
It is however misleading, as was Zureiq himself, about the fundamental nakba.
Sure, “the Arabic-speaking world’s failure to embrace modernity, science, real democracy … [victimizes] the Arabic-speaking people themselves.”
But that is not the source but merely a symptom of the catastrophe behind the Arab world’s disastrous policies; disastrous for itself and Israel.
Islam is fundamentalist. It is commanded to understand the Koran literally. Consequently the Faith not only locks believers into a medieval mind set, but requies the Jews to stay in the subservient niche the prophet assigned them. For sovereign Jews to exist in the Muslim heartland, in a state the equal of its Muslim neighbors contradicts the Koran. Israel, in short represents a form of blasphemy which pious Muslims cannot accept. This is the core problem. Islam forces the Arabs into their self defeating obduracy and bellicosity. That has created the maelstrom from which the Arabs cannot escape. There is the catastrophe.
Moderator,
Why have you not posted my comment?
Wonderful article.
You write very well when you’re writing about the middle east and leave out the empty ritual denunciations of Obama that remind me of ritual denunciations of Israel in every Al Ahram article.
denunciations of obama? would that it were so! dr. rubin never denounces obama, ritually or otherwise.
he ritually lets him off the hook, and all too often at that.
It is true that there seem to be few tools within Islamic culture that allow for self-criticism; Islam is simply always right. I’ve noticed that in America the tools of reason and logic we used to use very well have also become eroded to the point where reason and logic are optional, depending on the side you’ve chosen. How one then chooses a side other than being born into it is unknown.
On the political Left, the law has also become optional as witness OWS, sanctuary cities, etc.
Bahrain
Gulf Arabs aren’t happy with US foreign policy:
In my opinion, U.S. policy in the region is the number one security threat. Our American friends might not like this, but experience has taught us that the Americans do not have friends. On the contrary, they are quick to wash their hands of their friends.
“Therefore, U.S. policy in the Gulf constitutes a threat, because they have ulterior motives: to overthrow the regimes.
[...]
“Let us now examine U.S. policy in the region. Iran failed in its efforts to topple Saddam, but America realized this dream for the Iranians. Iran failed to gain influence in Iraq, but America generated a significant Iranian presence in Iraq. Iran failed in its efforts to export the revolution, but America was successful in exporting the revolution in the region. It seems that the U.S. has realized all the dreams of Iran. Imagine that!
[...]
“Indeed, they pose a threat to us, even if their program is for peaceful purposes. We are talking about a threat to the Gulf region. As you can see, Bushehr is very close to us. Moreover, Iran has [territorial] aspirations in the Gulf. This is another threat. Their designs are endless.
[...]
America is no longer an ally. On the contrary, it has become an intimidating party. Get that into your heads, weigh it, and you will see. Russia has become a capitalist country, so why can’t it become a new ally? The Americans used to scare us by saying that the Russians are Communists, but now Communism is gone. But now they have become more capitalist than the capitalists.
“We must reach an agreement with the Russians, and form ties with them. Think about it, and you will see.
“China is a friend from whom we have only seen good things throughout history, so why shouldn’t we strengthen our ties with it?”
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6048.htm
I noticed in my 20s that Time magazine always wrote the news up so you felt like you were in control and slightly superior. It was a neat trick. Being a New Yorker I looked on the Times as a pretty good paper and reasonably reliable. But I’ve slowly come to realize it is just the house organ of ‘The Eastern Intellectual Establishment’ and it makes you feel in control and superior. You know like Harvard, or Yale or my alma mater Columbia. Many of my classmates were Jewish and many of them were the children of Holocaust survivors. I’m not Jewish but I have absolutely no time for anti Semitism.Therefore I have no time for the NY Times. I understand the long association of American Jews with the left, but i do not understand why they continue to support the left when the supposedly great institutions of the left make common cause, not with genteel anti Semites, but with the direct political descendants of the Nazis strongest Middle East allies pursuing the same goal – the elimination of the Jewish people.
Lorenz,
Well said — your entire post! Often people in your position get angry. But really it’s for the Jewish People to ultimately “work out” by “battle” or strong argument these “wayward and extended forays taken by a majority of American Jews.
Like their forefathers, the wayward Jews who couldn’t wait for Moses to return with the Ten Commandments and subsequently broke their vows of Monotheism, the American Jews of the 20th Century adopted, not Baal, “in their wait,” (for what?) also broke their Monotheistic vows and worshiped FDR and all that went along with him since. These “wayward Jews” now, ever-so-painfully and slowly (by dint of their dying off) are in fact changing the percentages of American Jews registered as Democrats-vs-Republicans — often choosing, like myself, the “neo-Con” chair in which to sit under the “Big Tent.”
As a Jew, allow me to simply add that you, I, and the entire coterie of writers for Commentary Magazine (and of course others — many in PJM as well) quoting you now, “do not understand why [the majority of American Jews] continue to support the left when the supposedly great institutions of the left make common cause, not with the genteel anti Semites, but with the direct political descendants of the Nazis strongest Middle East allies pursuing the same goal – the elimination of the Jewish people.
The shock of this revelation turned me 180 degrees (in or around 9/11) from a standard liberal w/matching upbringing into the knuckle-dragging neo-Con I am today. And while my Catholic and Evangelical friends — two different peas in the GOP pod — are more than happy to count another Jew into the GOP — still, a rare species, they make sure I know that they do not label themselves as neo-Conservatives, rather, perhaps more humbly, as “conservatives.” We all get along just fine irrespective.
But back to your excellent topic. Podhoretz wrote a book on it, and there was a summarized version about a year or so ago in the Wall Street Journal on the Op-Ed page with different answers given by different people. You could probably find both with a search if interested. But it fits into a long and very unsettling “tradition” unfortunately of “Jews often being their own worst enemies.” And here again, entire books are written on that subject.
Not that it can be answered with some pithy statement, I’ll foray (dangerously) into that direction. One perhaps must consider giving “those Jews” (the ones causing the most damage to their own people) “a break” in a sense. I do not personally feel sympathetic towards them by any means.
However if I try very hard, and pull myself out of my own Jewish identity for a minute, and look in at them, I could find, as a defense attorney might if he were mounting a case… “excuses,” or “mitigating circumstances” shall we say for their atrocious, their even “treacherous” behavior (when the word applies). This due to the pressure cooker in which all Jews live (some far far more than others!).
Those Jews who feel little or no Jewish identity, will generally feel little or no compulsion to write damaging anti-Jewish screeds. I must immediately however note that even this isn’t true with a famous modern-day exception: the totally secular Jew who practically single-handedly created the obscene “Palestinian Solidarity Movement.”
For this decade of damage, not to mention the creation of a martyr (and lets not forget a Broadway show!) at the price of the premature death of an American girl who probably should have joined the Peace Corps, and who had already been pressured into covering-up, while in Gaza, sexual pressure & probably abuse by the Palestinian “brothers,” they reluctantly allowed to stay within their ALL-FEMALE tent — for all of this we may thank Adam Shapiro — BTW the “covering up” of the abuse was all shamefully accomplished by the girl’s so-called friends/comrades putting significant pressure on her that reporting it would “only damage ‘the cause’”). But on the wider point, it shows one really must be careful of the types of generalizations I was almost going to make.
But those Jews who do feel as if they’re living, or were raised in, a pressure cooker — of those I’d simply say that you either come out as tough as a diamond or, completely crushed from that pressure (experienced differently in actuality, and differently in the perception of different Jews).
I am in no way attempting to excuse them. Merely, desiring perhaps, to shed some light (to the extent that it’s even correct), for those like yourself who seem kindly disposed to listen.
Thank you,
–FF
Nothing more than hatred,
It is really amazing to see how history is reconstructed in favor of the powerful . Fabrication of Palestine history is a process started hundreds of years before Zionist uprising in Europe. The idea that Palestine “the promised land” as a non – Arab domination is linked with the western Christianity, when Rome became Christian for political reasons indeed. When Zionist ideas sparked late 19th century, then, they were strongly affected by European reality (colonization, nationalism, and secularism.”
In the framework of European nationalism combined by so called anti-Semitism, Hewish identity “in the secular sense” were drawn from outside, and the dominant idea that Jews must have a state had become the prevalent. A state for Jews named after French, Italian, …etc. the object is creating a state for Jews regardless of the place. No need to remind the Argentina, proposed by Herzel as suitable place for Jews, then he agreed on the British proposal for Uganda, and more than that he convinced the third Zionist conference of the Uganda proposal. Palestine was just an option, and for many Zionsits was un realistic option, for a simple but convincing reason: Palestine is inhabited by Arab Palestinians Muslims and Christians. All time the country is inhabited, not by tribes, but by citizens in more than 150 cities and towns, with their village satellite. Palestinian cities, specially coastal cities were flourishing. Jafa for example was like any other Mediterranean city; say Marcela or Alexandria.
British mandate on Palestine for 1920 – 1948 fostered Jewish colonization and generating of Israel on the ruins of the Palestinian Society. Basing on Balfour declaration, the mandate decree on Palestine has been issued by the League of nations in 1920. The purpose was establishing a Jewish homeland in the country through migrating hundred thousands of European Jews. Accordingly Zionist movement were regarded as a proper agency to participate in rule, despite that Jewish settlers were not more than 10% from population.
For more please see:
http://www.onepalestine.org/resources/flyers/MythHistory.pdf
If I go on a fifty years vacation and come home to find squatters have moved in and claim the home to be theirs is it?
Israel belongs to the Jews.You know it, I know it and the world knows it.
To say otherwise is to prove oneself a bigot or a fool.
Jewish “Vocation” in Europe lasted 2000 years not 50, on the contrary, Palestinian diaspora is only 64 years (1012 – 1948). celebtating other disaster in the bathroom simply reflects what Zionsits are.
I believe the correct term is “qaqba”, and I celebrate this every day in the bathroom