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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richnorth who wrote (20677)	12/16/2002 9:19:37 AM
From: Richnorth	Respond to of 27666

The origin of the Palestine- Israeli conflict Published By Jews For Justice In The Middle East Jews for Justice April 05, 2002 As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists"who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland for over a thousand years was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during the creation of the state of Israel. And all subsequent crimes- on both sides- inevitably follow from this original injustice. This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the region’s problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical record. INTRODUCTION: The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine to reclaim their ancestral homeland in the late 19th century. Jews bought land and started building their Jewish community their. They were net with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs` inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today. The problem with this explanation is that it is imply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet shall show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present). The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence to Arab society in Palestine.Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the Population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century (over 1200 years). In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world-view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs` opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people. One further point: Being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worst than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WW II) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930s and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation. But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic "land without people for a people without land"was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the route of the problem, as we shall see. Read the rest in zmag.org

To: Richnorth who wrote (20677)	12/16/2002 10:58:58 PM
From: Investor Clouseau	Respond to of 27666

Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism "In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a Nationalist revolt …David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that ‘in our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,’ but he urged, ‘let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.’ The truth was that ‘politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside' ....... Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle." ------------------------------------------------------------ Gandhi on the Palestine conflict – 1938 "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French…What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct…If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs…As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." Mahatma Gandhi quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples"ed. Mendes-Flohr Israeli's using phosphorus flares on Palestinians is unacceptable and an inflammatory escalation IMO. Perhaps Prime Minister Sharon is wise to prevent Chairman Arafat from attending Christmas Mass. Although, if senior Islamic clerics in Palestine issue a fatwa that says violence must stop while Chairman Arafat attends services, IMO the Israeli's will have no choice but to allow him to attend. IC