Ok, I'll have a go at this. It is complicated; the posts cover a number of different issues....
If you are interested in "historical roots", then you have to refer to the Arab powers.
We obviously have different definitions of roots. I was thinking of the period between the publication of Herzl’s The Jewish State and the Balfour Declaration, a time when most of the Arab states did not yet exist as states.
You want roots, here are roots. Two quotes from Mr. Balfour himself. First, what he said in public, in the Declaration itself:
...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."
Then in a private memorandum to the cabinet, the same man writes:
"Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit the land"
There you see the roots of conflict. A foreign power decides that the desires of one group are more important than the desires of another, and imposes them, effectively at gunpoint. As in so many cases of imperial overstretch, the result has been seemingly interminable bloodshed.
there are good guys and bad guys. Those who have persisted in the use and support of indiscrimate terror bombing are the bad guys.
Let me see, without really trying:
King David Hotel, 22 July '46, terrorist bombing, 88 dead.
Deir Yassin, 10 April '48, 254 civilians killed, British investigation declares that "many sexual atrocities" occur.
Qibya, 14 October '53, 66 civilians killed, either shot while trying to flee their homes or crushed when their homes were blown up around them.
Kafr Qasem, 29 October '56, 47 civilians shot while returning home from work in violation of a curfew that they had not been told existed.
These are the good guys.
None of this makes the Palestinian leaders or their current leaders any less despicable. It does help to understand how they got that way. As has been quoted before here:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return
The Palestinian leaders are murdering scum. The Irgun commandos who raided Deir Yassin were also murdering scum. Whatever else the Palestinians have done, they didn’t start this mess.
The British were acting under a League of Nations mandate, administering territory lost by a belligerent power (Turkey was an ally of Germany in WWI), with final disposition to be determined by the League. Its successor, the United Nations, provided the grounds, in international law, for partition of the former "Palestine", and the establishment of the State of Israel.
Does any of this make the British anything other than a foreign occupying power? If the entire world agrees that I am entitled to take half your property, will that make you feel any better about the expropriation? |
