First, the question of legality. You said the Jews "stole" the land from the Palestinians. Now you explain that they bought the land from its legal owners, some of them but by no means all of them absentee, a few European but most Arab, and that the Palestinians FELT as though it had been stolen.
I sympathize deeply. Life is very, very cruel, and a particularly painful cruelty is having land you have lived on for generations bought from its feudal overlord owners by people who evict you because they intend to live there themselves. It is unfair.
The Palestinian Arab population was at a deep disadvantage in its ability to respond to the sometimes cruel but legal activities of Zionist interests in acquiring land for the purposes of creating a safe haven for the victims of unceasing hatred in the Christian countries of Europe. You cited a case of a sale in 1920 from a European-based landlord family, but from what I'm reading, the overwhelming majority of sales of land were by rich Arab landowners.
Given that the Zionists had reached the conclusion that the Christian West was a demonic, unreliable place to try to live, as this had been demonstrated time after time and with deepening intensity in the late 19th century, their desperate attempts to make deals with whoever had juridical control of territories in which Jews might create a refuge are not puzzling. And how condemnable are they? They were... perturbed, as of course the Palestinians were who lived on the land the Jews were buying from its owners in the unjust system we have on this earth of land ownership by the rich and need for it by the poor. Rarely do owners acquire the consent of tenants before they sell. Such is the world. Such is free enterprise in land, in which you believe, I think.
I am not saying that Zionism in all its variegated efforts was the best thing, in retrospect, that the oppressed and persecuted Jews of Europe might have come up with. Maybe you can think of many more perfect solutions for a people persecuted beyond bearing. (I can't.) I believe they were distracted and did the best they could, and what you would have done, and I would, at the time, given that their options were so cruelly limited.
Here a quote from a book by a guy who hates the Jews, Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. You'll enjoy it if you want to think even more badly of the desperate improvisations of the Zionists:
"The Arabs reacted to the statistics of increasing Jewish presence under the mandate with... riots in 1920 and 1921; in 1929, after a series of provocations from Zionist chauvinists and Muslim fanatics at the Wailing Wall, the Muslim masses rioted in a wave of atrocious massacres which culminated with 135 Jewish deaths...."
There was more heavy Jew-killing during the Arab Revolt of 1936 - 39. But you know that.
Must have felt a lot like "pogroms," to the Jews, even if you think the word should be "riots."
Of course it is not mysterious that the largely illiterate Arab Palestinian masses, led by Nazi-phile, previously Mussolini-phile clerics, thought partition was unacceptable. An abomination, in fact. But they were wrong, in the hindsight of history, to think that a better deal was coming their way just because they were furious and there were six Arab armies telling them they could kick the Jews out.
So now we have furious Palestinians betrayed by their Arab brother-states, kept in squalid camps in those countries, and living under terrible restriction and disability in the occupied areas seized by Israel in 1967, and something has to be figured out. Some accommodation, however much they hate the Jews. The other Arabs are sure not interested in helping them out much.
What thoughts do you have? Please, please don't say the Jews should leave and rely on the rest of the world to save them the next time. Please don't say the Jews should put their safety in the hands of the Palestinians, either. That trust won't happen for a long time, especially if the Palestinians keep teaching Jew-hating in their textbooks and kindergarten songs.
Steven, I'm not a romantic. I fully understand that Israel is a State, and the State sings the song of the State. States do terrible things in their perceived interests.
It is important to oppose State actions and policies which violate human rights, and there are things being done by the Israelis in answer to the present intifada that are miserably unjustifiable.
By the Palestinians, too. Though it is unfashionable to mention that. (Everyone seems to have forgotten the gleeful endorsement by the brilliant Yassar Arafat of the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein when he seized Kuwait.)
Beleaguered nationalisms do dreadful things. Palestinian, Israeli.
So what now?
Don't say the Bronx. |
