h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thank you Halvana,

I have said much the same in many previous posts, and in different threads. I'm not sure why I was moderated in Post No 898, perhaps a pro-Israeli opinion was considered too pro. In fact it reflects to-days BBC news items, the opinion of two thirds of Israelis, and the polls conducted on the pro Al Quaida views of Palestinians conducted recently in Gaza.

Beats me.

"Asking" for land? Oh please. According to the PLO Charter, which has never been repealed or revised, they are demanding all of the territory "from the river to the sea" and nothing less.
Arafat speaks with two mouths, one in English and one in Arabic. He tells us what we want to hear and then says the exact opposite to his own people. Which are we supposed to believe?

That is interesting halavana. How do you know this?

*curious and enquiring from ignorance*

agcB

Thank you Halavana and EtherZev, for giving a second viewpoint to people who don't know. I've given my position before, and reiterate that I am in a difficult situation where I have to justify what I don't really know about. With your help, at least we on h2g2 can see the whole truth instead of bits!

EtherZev, I didn't see what you posted. You may have been moderated because information you gave wasn't backed up with a source (following the newest rules, that's possible!)

Anyway, Halavana, I'd be interested to know if there is a published source of what Arafat says to his people: that would make a more balanced viewpoint easier for those in my country.

Thanks

x x Fenny (still hoping for a balanced Zero Intolerance)

Hi.
The PLO Charter is on the internet and can be easily found using any search engine.
The rest will take a little more searching. Most local libraries have copies of the Balfour Declaration and the various White Papers on Palestine and the partition plan.
Even Mark Twain gave a description of Palestine in his day.
AIPAC, Gamla and the Jerusalem Post have vested interests in getting that type of information out and you may consider what they say propaganda, but their information is not invented, and is no less propaganda than what we hear on the news.
Mainly, rather than listen to what the mass media has been spouting, do some digging on your own.
Many Israelis understand Arabic, particularly those from Arab lands and they are very worried about what they hear and see on PA TV. Children are being trained to seek martyrdom. Sermons are preached urging good Muslims to kill Jews. When westerners see 10 year old children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks, we see children being indescriminantly shot down. To some parents of these children, they are being guaranteed a place in Paradise as martyrs in a jihad. To the Isreali soldiers, they're stuck in a catch 22 situation. If they shoot, they'll be seen as killing defenseless children. If they don't shoot, they'll be shot by the Tanzinim with automatic rifles using the children as canon foder.

Ok. Enough already. I'll get off my soap box now.

Also check out UN General Assembly Resolution 181, Nov. 29, 1947.
And United Jerusalem's website called Palestinian Media Watch.

Whew! What a backlog! And some interesting stuff, recently. I think I'm going to check out some of the references mentioned by Halavana and perhaps check out some of what EtherZev's mentioned as well. There is quite a problem, for me, with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict ... either side has done lots wrong, by now either side has a serious claim to the land ... must find out miore.

the Hanagah were fighting the same force that "let" them in Palestine
and who were they recognized by??

It is true that the Palestinians refused what the UN offered them at the beginning, and who wouldn't!! Giving the majority of the land "they" owned to less than 10% of the population, with even asking the majority 90% of what they wanted!! Anyone with a brain on his/her head would refuse such deal. Besides when the UN voted on the separation of Palestine and the creation of Israel, the Palestinians (the indigenous people) were not represented, no Arab country was represented, and hardly any third-world country (How Convenient)

Jordan in Jordan, it is not Palestine, although I know that many pro-Zionist would just wish that the Arab countries would just take the Million people who were driven out of their towns and villages in 1948


You mixed who built the land (the recent European Jews) with who owned the land. And how the population of Jews multiplied by the immigrant Jews mainly from Europe ( Tell Aviv went from 34,000 in 1925 to 120,000 in 1935 to 160,000 in 1939 that is 252% increase in 10yrs and 370% increase in 14 yrs. All were "illegal" immigrants to the Palestine.

Talk about Arab countries giving residency to Palestinians is non sense, this is their land.
I am not defending the PLO here, I am just saying they are, and most of the Arab countries will recognize Israel within the 1948 borders in return for a Palestinian state in the 1967 lands.........the UN calls for Israel to withdraw from the 1967 territories, they call it to recognize the Palestinians right to form their country...


Peace and Justice for ALL

Were all of those migrants to Tel Aviv Jewish? According to my sources, Arab population increased in Jewish areas faster than anywhere else because of the greater chance of finding a job.

As for who owned the land, the Jews bought the land partitioned to them, so they legally owned it. According to British government statistics, before Israel was established, 8% of the land was owned by Jews, 3 % was owned by Arabs and 16% was owned by Arabs who left the country, for reasons other than war.

About 70% of the territory was government property which passed to Israel at the end of the 1948 war. Most of it was desert and wilderness.

As long as there are people calling the 1948 war the Great Disaster, there will be people calling for the complete distruction of the state of Israel, who will never settle for the 1967 borders.

In Lebanon Palestinians are now forbidden to own property and may no longer inherit land from their fathers. In Egypt, Palestinians are not allowed to settle in unintabited areas which are reserved for only Egyptians.

The Palestinians who still own land in Israel have more to fear from the likes of Faisal Al Husseini, who forged his name on their property deeds, than they do from Israel. This was on the news when Orient House was taken over by the Israeli Army.

As for the "Million who were driven from their homes," the number of Jews and Arabs displaced in 1948 was fairly equal. Israel took in all the Jews who were displace. Why couldn't the Arab states?

And isn't it ironic that the only country who supported the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, at the time, was Israel, by virtue of support for the UN partitian plan?

Let me emphasize again: THE PALESTINIANS WERE OFFERED THEIR OWN STATE BUT BECAUSE OF THE ANIMOSITY OF THE SURROUNDING ARAB NATIONS, WHO THREATENED ANY ARAB SUPPORTING IT, THEY REFUSED AND LEFT, HAVING BEEN PROMISED NOT ONLY THEIR OWN LAND, BUT THE LAND OF THEIR JEWISH NEIGHBORS AS WELL.

Havalana, thank you. I have said as much so many times over in various other forums that anymore from me may be construed as spamming.

Fenny, the hidden post was a purely personal opinion, but it was posited from my stepping off from “center-left” into a more “ right-wing” opinion. There were no references to credit. No law says we must stay stumpf on political views.

There was a PLO meeting on Sat. 27th reported by DEBKAfile in which Arafat gave a speech to the various organizations under his wing.

A search on the al-Husseini clan would reveal that both Arafat and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (past and present) are all members of this family group.

There is also a great deal of contention in the USA concerning the bias of media reporting in favour of the Palestinian viewpoint. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA) is condemnatory of the tax payer funded radio broadcaster. Their website is well worth a peek.

ME@SF, I suppose that you would welcome the return of Kuwait to Iraq as it's Southern Province, as it once belonged to Iraq not so long ago.
Or is that a thought too deep?
Deep Thought

ME@SF

May 25, 1946. The Transjordan Parliament moved to rename transjordan/Palestine to the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” (Jordan has a number of websites)

The reference you have made to indigenous peoples. Permit me once again to explore this erroneous view.

Scenario:

The Hebrew language is rooted in the ancient Sumerian language. This has been proved by many scholars, among them John Allegro, and many others too numerous too list.
The emblem of Israel, the Shield of David – commonly referred to as the Star of David – has been found on many buildings in Ur and Uruk, the ancient cities of Sumer located in lower Iraq. These are just two examples of the many hundreds of archaeological discoveries connecting Habiru/Hebrews/Israelites to their ancient past. Does this automatically mean that modern day Jews and Israelis have an indigenous claim to these territories? (Yippee, Oil at last)

Of course it does not! Anymore that the present day Palestinian can claim direct descent from the ancient Phoenicians/Canaanites or any other specific group of peoples.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time attempting to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian, Ugaritic, Accadian, Aramaic to accurately reflect the descriptions of their own names, the names they gave to other peoples, and the names other peoples used to self describe themselves, would know how impossible it is to sort who is who in Middle Eastern history. Even the scholars don’t always agree.

Hi Halavana
Re 902
I should have been more specific and asked how you know that "Arafat speaks with two mouths, one in English and one in Arabic. He tells us what we want to hear and then says the exact opposite to his own people." I think you answered it by saying that most Israelis speak Arabic. Still, I'd like to understand.

The problems of posting rather than conversations is that contexts are much easier to clarify in real-time than in threads.

Thanks to all, I'm still reading and learning.

agcB

> ", I suppose that you would welcome the return of Kuwait to Iraq as it's Southern Province, as it once belonged to Iraq not so long ago."

I propose the relocation of everyone in the world to a remote valley somewhere in Northern Africa. That way everyone can go back to where they came from...

Now we're talking! Let's get right back to our roots!
Rod

Tell Aviv "the first Jewish City in this century" (Shimon Perez in his book "the Imaginary trip with Theodore Herzl to Israel"
"According to my sources, Arab population increased in Jewish areas faster than anywhere else because of the greater chance of finding a job"---- I see how they ended up in camps for over 50 years thats where the jobs were.

The Zionists were aware of the problems facing them at the time:
Chiam Weizmann- a Russian-born Jewish immigrant who sought to succeed Herzl after his death in 1904, and who then became Israel's first President- having arrived in Palestine in the wake of the British army, he was standing outside a tent near the Arab Village of Ramle when he was invited by Allenby to accompany him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an offer Weizmann declined....he later wrote that "something within" had deterred him--no doubt his apprehension that the Palestinians, many of whom initially welcomed the British, would have understood the message of a Zionist official walking through the Jaffa Gate with the liberators.

the use of the term "national home" was, like Weizmann's discretion, intended to disguise what the British officials knew and the Palestinians feared: the Zionist wanted to create a state for Jews in a province that was more than 90% Palestinian....at the Paris peace talks in 1919, a French delegate told Weizmann that France would not oppose a Jewish 'State' in Palestine. Weizmann cautioned him, he explained " we ourselves had been very careful not to use this term"

When the land issue became contentious, Jewish Agency purchases, which often involved the British Police expelling peasant farmers-included covenants forbidding sale to non-Jews, these covenants were later incorporated into Israeli law (in other states, I think, this would be called APARTHEID)..
The courts were preoccupied with land claims, and lawyers devoted a great deal of energy to providing title to land, much of which was held in common under the Ottoman rule..
Weizmann dismissed the natives and their claims "there is a fundamental difference between Jew and native" he wrote, and anticipating the current Israeli prime minister(Ariel Sharon) by 80 years, that the Palestinians "appreciated only force"!!

When Britain handed the 'Palestinian problem' to the UN, which voted for partition into a Jewish and a Palestinian states, both halves as it happened were with Palestinian majorities, more Jews would have to immigrate or many Palestinians would have to leave. By 1948, most of the civilian Palestinian population (close to a Million) have fled the terror and 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns brought upon them by the Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Gang.


Peace and Justice for ALL

"I suppose that you would welcome the return of Kuwait to Iraq as it's Southern Province, as it once belonged to Iraq not so long ago"

First of all you are talking about the Ottoman rule time in the Middle East, which both Iraq and Kuwait were under, and even Palestine was under..Therefore, they 'belonged' as you put it, to the Ottoman Empire.
Secondly, the native population of Kuwait consists of three main groups:
1) The "Hadar", these are mixture of various "settled" Arab families, mainly from the Nejd province in central Arabia (present day Saudi Arabia), these include the Al-Sabah family, the rulers of Kuwait, who were chosen by the early settlers of Kuwait to rule.
2) The Shiait (spell) a mixture of Arabs, mainly from the eastern Arabian province of "Al-Hasa", in present day Saudia Arabia, families with Iraqi background, and families with Iranian background...
3) The "Bedu" or Bedouins. These belong to various Arabian tribes that extend throughout the Arabian Peninsula, with some of the tribe heads living in Kuwait (alAjman tribe, alReshida tribe, Mutair tribe, alAwazem tribe), some were very early settlers, and some were 'late' comers...

Similar to the Israeli situation, the Iraqi army never asked whether the Kuwaitis wanted to be part of Iraq or not, they just took the land and forced the Kuwaiti population into becoming Iraqi citizens...

Iraq had no claim whatsoever in Kuwait, as Kuwait had its own Sheikh whose family was recognized as the rulers of Kuwait during both the Ottoman times and the British mandate in Kuwait and Iraq......

Peace and Justice for ALL

If you know any Israelis, they can help you. Otherwise, AIPAC, Gamla, The Jerusalem Post and especially United Jerusalem's Palestinian Media Watch have a lot of information about what Arafat has said, although they tend to paraphrase in order to save space.

I've seen several PATV segments over the net from Gamla with voice over translations. You may need to search quite a bit but I think they're still there. I think they use Windows Media Viewer.

If the Haganah was so interested in ethnically cleansing the land of Arabs, why did they issue an appeal for them to remain?
Oct. 2, 1947:
"The Jewish people extends the hand of sincere friendship and brotherhood to the Arab peoples and calls them to cooperate as free and equal allies for the sake of peace and progress, for the benefit of their respective countries."

In Feb. 1962 Salim Joubran made the following statement:
The Arab High Command asked us to leave the country for two weeks to make the battle easier for them. They told us: 'A cannon cannot differentiate between a Jew and an Arab. Leave the country for tywo weeks and you will come back victorious...; I heard the Haganah microphone asking the Arabs to remain and live peacefully wth their Jewish brethren. The late Jewish Mayor of Haifa also asked us to go back to our homes. The Histadrut, our trade union, was distrubuting leaflets asking the Arabs to come back. I still have that leaflet."

ME@SF, you've been quite forward in putting hard-to-answer questions to me. Now I have a question for you. I don't imagine it will be easy to answer, but I do ask you to think through, before you put your words to the crowds.

Your attitude on this forum has appeared to me to be quite anti-Israel, and has been totally pro-Palestinian. You seem to count Yasser Arafat as representative of your views, and show yourself completely in favour of the party which used to be called PLO, and of its aims and attitudes. How do you justify this view, when the PLO openly supported Iraq in 1990-1991, ie at a time when Iraq invaded Kuwait? This is taken from a news item on this page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_445000/445289.stm

ME, it's important to remember that 'Peace and Justice for ALL' *includes* Israel, and Kuwait, and I don't always see that clarity in your attitudes. I have to remember that most of my fellow Brits don't know what I know, and have more sympathy with your attitudes than mine; that's why I've fought so hard on this forum. When it seemed as if you and I were alone, that's when it was hardest for me to keep returning. Peace and Justice are admirable ambitions - keep them in mind!

x x Fenny (still seeking Zero Intolerance)