Approximately 720,000 Arabs were displaced during 1948. (http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/100/maps/refuge.html.) Of 870,000 Jews that lived in Arab states about 600,000 Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel after 1948. jajz-ed.org.il
To me it is a simple "exchange of populations as it has occurred between Pakistan and India, Greece and Turkey, Germany and Poland/Russia and in many other places in the world. Israel took care of its refugees, the Arabs kept theirs in squalid camps as political pawns, refusing them citizenship (except Jordan), and Kuwait even forcibly evicted the Palestinians it had after the Gulf war. Where was the world outrage then. Well during the cold war, the Soviets had a political interest in not solving the problems of those refugees to keep the Middle east in turmoil (they were the suppliers of arms to those countries). The funny thing is that the Soviets (through Chechoslovakia) where the first to supply arm to the nascent state of Israel, not for their love of the Jews mind you (Stalin was a real pure bread anti-semite), but to keep the turmoil in the region alive. They had vague hopes that Israel will turn out to be a "client state", mostly because the back bone of Israeli society at the time was the collectives movement (kibbutzes, which were Islands of communism within the Capitalistic state), in 1953, they lost all hopes and started to turn and changed the tactic to support some of the neighboring Arab nations (Egypt, Syria and Iraq).
The question is not one of "fairness", I have no question in my mind about that, the question is what do ewe do now that the Arab nations have failed for 50 years to bear their responsibilities, and kept those refugees living on the false hope of "throwing the Jews to the sea", kept inciting them and their own populations to hate, support the movement of Palestinian terrorism and refuse to face reality.
Zeev
Zeev |
