Comments on: Palestinian Nationalism

By: kalidas

kalidas — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:51:17 +0000

No King Solomon.
No King David.
No Masada.
No Egypt exile.

Get over it. Embrace your pagan roots.

Schlomo Sand is the “man of the year.”
No one else even comes close.

http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

By: opeluboy

opeluboy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:40:56 +0000

Chris promotes the tired, thoroughly discredited (by Israeli historians, no less) Zionist propaganda we’ve all come to expect any time Israel is criticized for her innate and universally condemned thuggery.

It seems today’s memo is to encourage all Israeli apologists to promote the myth that the majority of Israelis are not Europeans, but native inhabitants of Palestine and the surrounding areas who came back home. A ludicrous and easily disproved lie, but one flourishing today online.

Keep up the great work. You are your own worst enemies.

By: Piero Damiani

Piero Damiani — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:37:09 +0000

The Jews of lebanon were not stripped of their nationality. Most left as a result of the 1975 civil war , along with hundreds of thousand of lebanese from other religions looking for security, economic and physical, elsewhere.

By: striped duvet covers

striped duvet covers — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:35:41 +0000

I don’t see what one has to do with the other.

By: billrowe

billrowe — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 07:33:02 +0000

Not only is one irrelevant to the other (2 wrongs do not make a right), even the premise that the Jews were returning to their historic “homeland” is incorrect. A recent bestseller by the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand ,”When and where was the Jewish People Invented”, documents that the “ancient” Jews were never expelled from their supposed “homeland”; that the Palestinians are the descendants of theose ancient Jews converted to Islam. The books major conclusions have not been seriously challenged by other Israeli historians. It is written in Hebrew and is currently being translated into many languages. At least 4 printings so far in French. It is due to be translated into English by Verso and to be available late Autumn.Simply Israel is a nation based on ethnic cleansing and apartheid and an abomination to modern concepts of democracy.

By: Dan L.

Dan L. — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:21:02 +0000

Chris,
I don’t see what one has to do with the other. Because the Puritans fled Europe, did that excuse the U.S. government policies towards the native Americans? The Palestinians didn’t have anything to do with Jews leaving Iraq. Just the opposite: the Jews who left Iraq obtained Palestinian homes and lands- free – and within days of the Palestinians fleeing. Palestinians who returned one week later found Iraqis in their homes.

The Mizrahim excursions from Arab lands is another matter. I believe many will contest your verison, but that’s a separate discussion, which only confuses a discussion of the article.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:20:12 +0000

In 1948, there were 260,000 practicing Jews living in Morocco, 129,300 in Iraq, 14,000 in Algeria, 56,000 in Tunisia, 35,000 in Libya, 90,000 in Egypt, 51,000 in Yemen , 6,000 in Lebanon, and 4,500 in Syria. In total nearly 900,000 from across the Middle East, the communities having roots dating back as far as 2500 years. By 1949, most of these Jews had been stripped of their nationalities, their citizenship rejected, their belongings robbed, their homes taken, and the rising Pan-Arab nationalism giving rise to rabid anti-Jewish riots, championing that unforgettable verse, “idbah al-yahud”: slaughter the Jews.

For every refugee – adult or child – in Syria, Lebanon, or elsewhere in the Arab world who compels our sympathy, there is a Jewish refugee who fled from the Arab country of his birth. For every Arab who moved to neighboring lands, a Jew was forced to flee from a community where he and his ancestors may have lived for two thousand years. The Jews escaped to their original homeland, where their roots are even older; the Arabs also arrived where they were in the majority, where they shared the same language and culture with fellow Arabs, and often only a few dozen miles from their places of origin.