To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (399 ) 4/27/2001 9:25:24 AM From: Hawkmoon Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 2279 reparations for it were devised at the expense and to the detriment of a third community, namely the Palestinians. So what you're saying is that the British basically told the Palestinians to "bugger off" and gave their property to the European Jews? Are you saying that the British (and Turks previously) were not under extreme pressure to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine? Are you saying that up until the 1948 declaration of war against Israel, that the European Jews actually never paid for most of the land that they settled in the Yishuv, buying it from the Arab and Palestinian owners?? Are you saying that the Jews were not the primary employers of Palestinians from 1900 - 1948 (and even today), providing them jobs and a means of existence that no other rulership, Turkish or British, ever provided them? If you're telling us all these things, I guess we have to burn all the history books (and the records from which they were drawn), and rely solely on Gustave's "Revisionist Version of World History". Because history refects all of the above. It reflects that all the current infrastructure that exists in Palestine is 90% Jewish constructed. The Jews brought the concept of irrigation to Israel and introduced large scale agriculture. Prior to war breaking out in 1948, the Jews also accumulated most of their land through financial transactions freely entered into by both parties, and they still can show the records that refect the deed and title on their purchase. And we know that Palestinians were heavily dependent upon the economy the Jews built in Palestine. Sure they were consider "cheap labor", but considering that utter unemployment and poverty that was their alternative reality, and the fact that the Jews had more than enough poverty stricken immigrants to draw from, I would say the Palestinian people have benefitted tremendously. Now I don't know what Yasir Arafat has brought to Palestine, or why he has retained personal control over the hundreds of millions of dollars that has been provided to the PLO over the past decades. However, all he has been able to promise his people is open conflict, not economic growth. Hawk