Today is Friday, June 4th, 2010 and it is now 1136PM here in San Franz, Mindanao, Philippines.
Misconception # II
"Israel Ethnically Cleansed 'Palestine' of its Arab inhabitants When It Became a Nation in 1948"
Today Israel has 1.2 million Arab CITIZENS. Israel is an incredibly small place, it can be driven north to south in less than 4 hours, under the speed limit. Ergo, either Israel is the most inept genocidal nation the world has ever seen, or the accusation is entirely false.
In fact, Israel DID force SOME Arabs to leave. Between 1949 and 1952 Israel evicted the Arab inhabitants from 11 villages. It did this in border zones where there was a very real concern about infiltration by terrorists and enemy soldiers. However, these 11 villages had all signed the "Obesiance Agreement" with Israel. This was a non-belligerency pact that Israel then completely ignored. This was 100% wrong on Israel's part and the almost 900 Arabs effected by these actions should get more than just the token reparation payout that Israel paid in 1963.
However, critics do not even (usually) know about these 11 border villages. Their charge relates to the mass exodus of Arabs that took place between 1947 and 1949, the event Arabs call, "al Nakhba" (The Catastrophe).
They charge that Israelis, armed to the teeth, raped and pillaged their way across "Palestine," forcing Arabs to flee by committing atrocities and otherwise using violence and overt threats.
First the historical context...the land in question, Israel, the so called "West Bank," Gaza and Jordan have only ever held 2 nations, " (Ancient) Israel" and "Judea." While accepted science, and folklore, holds that Jews were not indigenous to these lands, that they migrated as semi-nomads from what is now Iraq, when they DID settle these lands roughly 4000 years ago they conquered and assimilated the native Peoples, a group of Semitic city states known as the "Canaanites." There was an additional people living in what is now Gaza, the "Philistines."
The Phillistines themselves were conquerors, a Proto-Greek People of the Mycanean Culture, centered on Crete. They too fell before Israel, the last to do so, at around 1000 BCE/BC so that by this era ALL the afore mentioned lands were ENTIRELY Jewish in the political sense, as well as in population and culture.
Conversely, the Arab Peoples who are indigenous to only 1 place on the planet*, did not even begin as a People until the 4th Century BCE/BC!
*The Arabs are indigenous to al Hejaz, a relatively small section of what is now Saudi Arabia.
The first Jewish Nation, the Kingdom of Israel, was already old by the time the Jews defeated the "Palestinians" and with the defeat, and subsequent extinction of the Phillistines, Jews became the indigenous People of these lands.
The 1st Arabs arrived 1700 years later, with the army of Khalifa 'Umar (Caliph Omar) in the 3rd decade of the 7th Century CE/AD,, 2700 years after the Jews arrived.
Still, they did not settle the land, they merely administered it as a backwater province of a far flung empire that within 1 generation stretched from China to Morocco, and up into Europe as far as northern France.
IF France is an "Arab Homeland," IF the Chinese are "Settlers," the "Palestinians" MAY have an argument.
More in the next entry...
Misconception # II
"Israel Ethnically Cleansed 'Palestine' of its Arab inhabitants When It Became a Nation in 1948"
Today Israel has 1.2 million Arab CITIZENS. Israel is an incredibly small place, it can be driven north to south in less than 4 hours, under the speed limit. Ergo, either Israel is the most inept genocidal nation the world has ever seen, or the accusation is entirely false.
In fact, Israel DID force SOME Arabs to leave. Between 1949 and 1952 Israel evicted the Arab inhabitants from 11 villages. It did this in border zones where there was a very real concern about infiltration by terrorists and enemy soldiers. However, these 11 villages had all signed the "Obesiance Agreement" with Israel. This was a non-belligerency pact that Israel then completely ignored. This was 100% wrong on Israel's part and the almost 900 Arabs effected by these actions should get more than just the token reparation payout that Israel paid in 1963.
However, critics do not even (usually) know about these 11 border villages. Their charge relates to the mass exodus of Arabs that took place between 1947 and 1949, the event Arabs call, "al Nakhba" (The Catastrophe).
They charge that Israelis, armed to the teeth, raped and pillaged their way across "Palestine," forcing Arabs to flee by committing atrocities and otherwise using violence and overt threats.
First the historical context...the land in question, Israel, the so called "West Bank," Gaza and Jordan have only ever held 2 nations, " (Ancient) Israel" and "Judea." While accepted science, and folklore, holds that Jews were not indigenous to these lands, that they migrated as semi-nomads from what is now Iraq, when they DID settle these lands roughly 4000 years ago they conquered and assimilated the native Peoples, a group of Semitic city states known as the "Canaanites." There was an additional people living in what is now Gaza, the "Philistines."
The Phillistines themselves were conquerors, a Proto-Greek People of the Mycanean Culture, centered on Crete. They too fell before Israel, the last to do so, at around 1000 BCE/BC so that by this era ALL the afore mentioned lands were ENTIRELY Jewish in the political sense, as well as in population and culture.
Conversely, the Arab Peoples who are indigenous to only 1 place on the planet*, did not even begin as a People until the 4th Century BCE/BC!
*The Arabs are indigenous to al Hejaz, a relatively small section of what is now Saudi Arabia.
The first Jewish Nation, the Kingdom of Israel, was already old by the time the Jews defeated the "Palestinians" and with the defeat, and subsequent extinction of the Phillistines, Jews became the indigenous People of these lands.
The 1st Arabs arrived 1700 years later, with the army of Khalifa 'Umar (Caliph Omar) in the 3rd decade of the 7th Century CE/AD,, 2700 years after the Jews arrived.
Still, they did not settle the land, they merely administered it as a backwater province of a far flung empire that within 1 generation stretched from China to Morocco, and up into Europe as far as northern France.
IF France is an "Arab Homeland," IF the Chinese are "Settlers," the "Palestinians" MAY have an argument.
More in the next entry...