You make it sound as if Israel has not displaced any Arabs
You make it sound as if the Arabs did not fight four wars trying to destroy Israel. The displacement happened because of the war of 1948, which the Jews did not start. If the Arabs had accepted partition, they would still be there. Had Israel lost one war, how many Jews would still be there? The Palestinian national leader in 1948 was the Mufti, a Nazi and an eager implementor of Hitler's Final Solution. He's still a Palestinian hero, btw.
The Arabs left in 1948 for mixed reasons, prudence (over 200,000 evacuated before the end of the Mandate), displacement, and general panic, which was increased by the Arab triumphalist rhetoric (we're gonna roll right into Tel Aviv, we're having lots of victories, don't get in our way), which was followed by exaggeration of Jewish atrocities (the Arabs themselves publicized and exaggerated Deir Yassein), and failure to perform. If you were an uneducated Arab (the effendi class had all left beforehand) and you heard all this on the radio, and someone ran into the village yelling 'the Jews are coming!', would you wait around? Do you supposed they told their sons they fled before they saw a Hagganah soldier?
As for "ancient people" stuff, do you know anything about how many people actually lived in the area in 1880, when the Zionists started developing the area? About 300,000 people total, the area was just a backward Syrian province. (Now if you mean "backward people", you have a point) Jerusalem was a town of 20,000, mostly Jews, then Christians, with Muslims third in population. More than half of the "ancient people" showed up at the same time as the Zionists, for an obvious reason -- jobs, not available elsewhere in the Levant.
And what do you mean, Edward Said is not an Arab? He is a highly politicized Palestinian writer.
Name one Israeli olive grove that's been bulldozed
The Gush Etzion settlement bloc, 1948. |
