PART 1:
The birth of Israel and the Palestinian Refugees.
So yelled Delilah when she betrayed Samson to
her Philistine kin. Palestine comes from the word Philistine, the people that
dominated the area so completely for so long. Of course, Jews call the land
Israel, Judea and Samaria because they, too, dominated the area for so long.
The sons of Abraham through Isaac (the Jews) and Ishmael (the Arabs) are still
fighting to determine whom God loves more.
Never an angelic nation of perfect men, Israel
has never the less always held the moral high ground. For decades, Hamas and
Hezbollah have done the following:
Step 1: Launch rockets into Jewish
neighborhoods. Step 2: Place photogenic children holding kittens around the
rockets. Step 3: Wait for Israel to bomb them. Step 4: Wait for U.N. to condemn
Israel and demand unilateral cease-fire.
Americans can’t remember five minutes ago.
Arabs and Israelis think in terms of millennia. Since 1948, Israel has fought
seven wars, two Palestinian intifadas and a series of armed conflicts. The
openly stated goal of the Arabs was always the total destruction of the state
of Israel. Given that the birth of modern Israel came out of the Holocaust,
Jews take this talk seriously. Modern anti-Semitism often hides behind the fig
leaf of criticism of Israel. Except when it doesn’t. Notice how protesters
often attack synagogues and not embassies. In France recently, protesters
chanted “Gas the Jews!” That good old-fashioned 14th century Jew
hatred? It’s back, baby!
The common narrative is that
Palestinians lived in the area forever and that Jews took their land, kicked
them out, and have oppressed them for decades. It’s wrong. What’s true is that
the Arabs of Palestine have suffered and been mistreated at every turn but the
reality is rather complicated. A creation of modern politics, there was never a
country named Palestine or a distinct Palestinian identity. There are, however,
peoples who lived under Rome, Byzantium, Muslim Ottomans, the British, and now
the Jews. Under the Ottoman Turks, who abused them as much as anyone, the area
was a dirty and impoverished backwater. Jerusalem circa 1900 smelled of dung
and donkey sweat. Teodor Hurtzl’s Zionist movement was gaining steam, convincing
world Jewry that the only route to safety and prosperity was a resurrected
Israel. The movement even reconstituted Hebrew, a language dead in all but
religious ceremony.
By 1895, Jews were a majority in
Jerusalem. They flooded the area, buying as much land as they could. Land sales
to Jews were outlawed but they continued through bribes and proxies. Arabs were
subjected to further insult when their own people would collude with corrupt
Ottomans in outright thievery. Counterfeit documents would claim the farmers
never owned the land in the first place. The land was then happily sold to Jews
flush with cash from international donations. Despite the popular outrage,
historian Benny Morris writes that prices were fifty times greater in 1944 than
in 1910. German consul Heinrich Wolff observed, “in daylight (Arabs) were
crying out against Jewish immigration and in the darkness of the night were
selling lands to the Jews”.
Poor, oppressed and uneducated Arabs
marveled as industrious Jews took worthless swampland and soaked up the fetid
water with groves of Cypress trees. Through experimentation and innovation,
they turned swamps into fertile and expansive groves of almond trees. Large
citrus orchards perfumed the countryside. Jews used cheap Arab labor initially
but later used exclusively Jews. Some view this as racist but “1913” author Amy
Marcus states the Jews had an “almost mystical belief” that if they didn’t work
the land with their own hands, they didn’t really have the right to own it.
After the Ottoman defeat in WWI,
Great Britain ruled Palestine. The 1917 Balfour Declaration set the prospect of
a Jewish nation in motion and Britain suggested a large area with ample space
for two countries. But the next thirty years saw increasing tension and hysteria
as Arabs became desperate to stop Jewish usurpers. Arabs pressured Britain
heavily and the proposed Jewish area was whittled down substantially. Jewish
immigration was banned. In a series of riots throughout the 1920’s and 30’s,
Arabs attacked shops and beat Jews, carrying signs and shouting slogans like,
"Death to Jews", "Palestine is our land and the Jews are our
dogs!" and, "Muhammad's religion was born with the sword".
Arabs feared Jews would raze the
Al-Aqsa mosque (built atop the holiest site in Judaism) to rebuild the Temple
destroyed by Rome in A.D. 70. Jews at the Wailing Wall were frequently beat and
stoned. HajAmin al Husseini, the Mufti
of Jerusalem and friend of Hitler, sought to rid the entire Middle East of
Jews. In 1928, he organized construction next to and above the Wall. Mules were
driven through the praying area often dropping excrement. Wastewater was thrown
on Jews. The Islamic call to prayer blared next to the Wall during Jewish
prayers. Tensions grew and some Jews talked of forcibly “reclaiming” the Temple
Mount. The conflict exploded. A British report noted the violence was fully attributable to
the Arabs and described an orgy of rape, mutilation and torture in Hebron.
Hundreds of Jews were saved by benevolent Arab neighbors who offered sanctuary
by hiding them in their own houses. The sentiment did not spread, however, as
the continued loss of land and dignity led to more riots and uprisings, notably
the frequent terrorism against Jews and British soldiers from 1936-1939. Masses of Jewish fruit trees and other property were destroyed. For
their efforts, possibly 10% of all Arab men in the region were struck
down.
The Grand Mufti with Hitler in 1941.
Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for recruiting 20,000
Muslim volunteers for the SS, who murdered Jews in Croatia and Hungary.
The eventual mass of refugees was
not created by land transfers, however. Historians have concluded that only
several thousand families were displaced by land sales between 1880 and 1940.
When Israel declared Independence in 1948, it was attacked by Arabs from
British Mandate Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt. Arab League
commander Al-Quwaqji, stated he would “drive the Jews into the sea” and
“murder, wreck and ruin everything standing in our way”. Arabs committed to
“Total Warfare” frequently shelled civilian areas. Approximately 700,000
Palestinians evacuated. Some left to avoid the fighting, others evacuated to provide open
paths for Arab forces and some were expelled by the Jews. There had always been
a wily and aggressive element to the Jewish immigration and, surely with the
Holocaust fresh in their minds, they committed several small massacres of
Palestinian villages, including one at Deir Yassin, which claimed just over 100
victims.
Utterly shocked by defeat, they couldn’t
understand how the whole of the Arab peoples could not expel a few hundred
thousand dirty Jews. To this day, the complete humiliation is a constant
reminder of Muslim incompetence, infighting and disorganization. And because,
to a Muslim, “God is justice and justice is God” according to historian Bernard
Lewis, “the catastrophe” has to be avenged. They choose revenge over
cooperation, mutual respect, and prosperity for everyone. They fight against
history itself because dignity is the air they breathe and they are willing to
die for it. The Jews oblige them.
