Expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem, 1948
Recently, Mahmoud Abbas said (again) that ‘not one Israeli’ would remain in “our lands.” For Abbas, there is no hypocrisy in demanding at the same time that the descendents of 1948 Arab refugees should ‘return’ to the Israel where they never lived, because — why should we be surprised? — he believes that everything between the river and the sea is “our lands.”
Let’s make no mistake about the significance of the Obama/Kerry ‘peace’ process: if something like the formula of borders ‘based on’ the 1949 armistice lines with land swaps is implemented, then some undetermined number — perhaps 100,000 — of the 300,000 Jewish residents of Judea (excluding Jerusalem) and Samaria will be expelled from their homes, farms, businesses, etc. If Jerusalem is divided, then perhaps another 200,000 will be forced to leave.
In other words, the US is trying — it is one of the highest-priority foreign policy goals of the Obama Administration — to implement a plan to ethnically cleanse the area of Jews.
When the Jordanian army illegally invaded this area in 1948, this was precisely what happened: Jews were driven at gunpoint from land that was promised to them by the international community in the Palestine Mandate. Since 1967, of course, this injustice has been undone as Jews returned to their historic homeland. Now our government is trying to expel them yet again!
Although Western supporters of the PLO make much of the fact that Abbas has only said ‘Israelis’ and not ‘Jews’, anyone familiar with the content of Palestinian media in Arabic knows that the PLO’s motives are frankly racist. It is shocking that a country like ours which exhibits such exquisite sensitivity to the slightest whiff of prejudice would pretend not to notice and proceed with a plan that is racist in the extreme.
Well, they say, it’s absolutely necessary because the status quo is unsustainable. Millions of Arabs are living ‘under occupation’. It can’t continue!
But actually, some 95% or more of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (which is dominated by the PLO). ‘Occupation’ impinges upon them only where it must to prevent terrorism against Israelis. What the Palestinians want (among many other things) is
• Complete sovereignty, including the ability to make military alliances, control airspace, etc.
• Removal of all Israeli security measures, such as the security barrier, all checkpoints, etc.
Really, is it the case that ending Palestinian ‘frustration’ at the inability to make war on Israel is so important that it justifies the ethnic cleansing, for the second time, of hundreds of thousands of Jews? Where is the urgency? Couldn’t many of the grievances of the Arabs be ameliorated if they were to stop their daily attempts to murder Jews?
In fact, why is it so urgent to grant a sovereign state to a ‘people’ most of whose ancestors moved to ‘Palestine’ no earlier than 200 years ago from Egypt or Syria, who have defined themselves as a people in opposition to the Jews and whose sovereignty is intended to undo that of the Jews in their homeland, and who have expressed their new-found nationalism in the most violent and ugly ways possible?
Make no mistake, if this plan is implemented the damage to Israel’s security and to its social cohesion will be incalculable. This, of course, is the intent of Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO, who have never wavered from their objective of destroying Israel and replacing it with another Arab dictatorship (which will probably shortly become another Islamist theocracy under Hamas).
Is this how our country, which prides itself on its embrace of freedom, justice and democracy, promotes those values beyond its borders?
Technorati Tags: Obama Administration, Israel, Palestinians
As Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah affirmed again today, the real issue isn’t settlements or borders or any of the side show issues that consume the time and attention of Western diplomats.
The real issue is Israel’s existence, which the Muslim World will never accept. It might accept a hudna of sorts with the Jewish State on a temporary basis but real peace with it from its point of view is impossible.
A lot of people in the West have great difficulty picturing there are people in other parts of the world who live only to destroy an entire nation! There can be no real meeting of the minds with those who want to see you dead.
Nasrallah is honest but let’s face it, they all they think that way in the Muslim and Arab World. Peace in the Middle East after you’ve heard his anti-Semitic, racist and bigoted speech replete with the promise of genocide and extermination of the Jewish nation?
Dream on.
I noticed yesterday, placed no doubt deliberately way down at the bottom of a page in the UK’s ‘Evening Standard’ newspaper, a few lines about a very recent speech by Hassan Rouhani, the new President of Iran. This man, who the Europeans and other “ostriches” in the West are anxious to present as a moderate, referred to Israel as a very old wound on the body of Islam that has to be removed.
It is essential to repeatedly press the point home, as NormanF has done, that there can never be real peace between the Jewish people and the Muslim world. Hopefully, the Israeli delegation attending the charade in Washington will take the earliest opportunity to walk out.