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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (8298)	11/9/2001 3:38:10 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Zionists are equally, embellishers Not at all. I just pointed out that Arafat's Zionism is mostly fantasy and apparently you can't disagree. The Zionist story is that the Jews, needing a state as a refuge from persecutions, began returning to their ancient homeland, to which they had always been deeply attached and had always maintained a presence, and finding it misruled and sparsely populated, began buying land, creating settlements, building farms and cities out of sand dunes and swamps. They did this in hopes of building a state with the agreement of the Turks, then the British and the Hashemites their allies. Then the Arabs began to attack them, led by the local rulers who were losing influence. They responded at first with restraint, but as the attacks worsened the built an army to defend themselves, especially as the main concern of the British was Arab appeasement. Partition plans were proposed in 1937 and 1947; the Jews accepted and the Arabs refused each time. In 1948 the Mandate ended and six Arab armies tried to destroy the infant Jewish state. They thought they would succeed easily. They failed. Now this story, while it underrepresents the feelings of local Arabs about the Jewish settlement and the sufferings of the refugees created by the war, is based in fact. No part of it is an ahistorical fantasy. Therefore it is not an "equal embellishment" to Arafat's account, whose main points are a complete fabrication.

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (8298)	11/10/2001 1:02:42 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 23908

re: Zionists are equally, embellishers. Well, len, shall we review? I called the main points of Arafats Palestinian-"Zionism" ahistorical fabrications and you responded that Zionists were equally as bad. So what points did you come up with as examples of Zionist embellishment? 1. "A land without a people for a people without a land". There were about 250,000 Arabs in Palestine in 1880 and about 40,00 Jews. Palestine was sparsely populated, badly misruled, and large areas of land had been abandoned and had reverted to state ownership. So this is exaggerated but not a fantasy. And there was a culturally Arab majority. Half a point. 2. King David founded Jerusalem. The Zionists never said this; they knew the Bible and so did their audience. David took Jerusalem from the Jebusites. No point. 3. Religious zealots died at Masada. The leads to quibbles about whether the Sicarii were a splinter group of the Zealots or a separate faction. Josephus, while calling them (& others) bandits, also makes clear their ideological motivations. No point. What does this have to do with Zionism anyway? 4. The Nazis made soap out of Jews. No, only lampshades; the victims just thought it was soap. Big difference, right? 5. Abraham was a Jew. So now you're rewriting Genesis? It says that he was the first monotheist who made the Covenant that binds his descendants. The term 'Jew' didn't exist yet; he is the first Hebrew. And your point is? Aside from the first point, what does any of this have to do with Zionism? You haven't addressed any of points in the sketch of the Zionist narrative that I gave you. You certainly haven't found any whoppers to match these statements from the Palestinian Authority: Palestinians are descended from the original Canaanite and Philistine inhabitants of Palestine. (Well I suppose some of them could be, but there's no cultural link whatsover, the Israelites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines having come in between the Canaanites and the Arabs) There is no evidence of Jewish antiquities in Jerusalem. There never was a Jewish Temple on the Haram al-Sharif. The events of the Bible took place in Yemen. These are all flat-out willful lies. Palestinians have always been a separate people in a country called Palestine. The notion of Arab Palestine as a political entity didn't even exist before the 1960's. Accounts from 1948 refer to "Arab refugees from Palestine", never Palestinians. Jordan annexed the West Bank with no opposition.