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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (190511)	10/10/2001 7:40:08 AM
From: E. T.	Respond to of 769667

Hi JDN, I've picked up a few books on the subject and I've learned quite a bit. I'm just finishing up work and I'll get back to you with some of the details. Yes, land was paid for, but not all land. I'll dig it up, but I have a quote from Ytzak Rabin's memoir where he says he was ordered by David Ben Gurion in 1949 to remove the Arab populations from two villages, numbering 50,000 to 90,000 people, and in the process killing 200 Arabs. I also know that there were in excess of 460 Arab villages of which 350 or more have been completely removed from history books as well as from the land. I'm more interested in setting the record straight than choosing sides too. Even though I may dispute the official Israel military version of history, I am pro Israel. The problem for me is that I believe in one man one vote and equality.

To: JDN who wrote (190511)	10/10/2001 11:55:28 AM
From: E. T.	Respond to of 769667

Again from Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a professor at Haifa University. An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in 1907, called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of settlement activity. His observations are moving and his suggestions prophetic and eloquent. Epstein refers to the Arabs as..."those who till the land, its true proprietors ... In the land of our dreams there is a whole people that has dwelled there for hundreds of years and never meant to leave." These Arab inhabitants made up more than half a million, 80 per cent of whome were peasants, tilling all the arable land. Epstien claims that no good land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession. Zionist organizations have habitually bought land from large absentee landlords, and this meant the dispossession of families that have tilled the same soil for generations. By law, the zionist buyers are right, but they are committing an injustice and an error. "While we emphasize the love we have for the land of our ancestors, we forget that the people living there now has a sensitive heart and a loving soul" Epstien was an eyewitness to one scene of exile: Still ringing in my ears is the wailing of Arab women from the village of Jaony, now Rosh-Pina (a Jewish settlement founded in 1882), on the day their families left to settle in the Golan, on the east side of the Jordan. The men were riding the donkeys, and the women followed them walking and sobbing. The valley was filled with their lamentations. From time to time they stopped and kissed the rocks and the ground. Epstein uses not only moral argurments, but also pragmatic ones: Will the dispossed keep silent and accept what has been done to them? They will eventually wake up to gain by force what has been robbed from them by gold! They will take to court the foreigners that pushed them off their land, and then they may be both prosecutors and judges... And this people... is but a small part of the great nation which holds the neighboring coutnries: Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt... At least in Palestine there is still no Arab movement in the national and political sense, but this people does not need a movement. It is big and strong and does not need a revival, because it never died, and never stopped living for a minute... Let us not provoke the sleeping lion... Jewish settlements have brought much good the country and a material benefits to Arab workers: but all of this will not atone for our transgressions. We will not get credit for good deeds, but our name is chiseled into the evil, which will be remembered forever... We must consider every step we take, and solve the question of our relations with the Arabs before creating a new Jewish question... Whenever the spurious national good harms universal justice, this supposed good will become a gross national sin, which will never be expatiated.