UN and Refugees

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Sep 8, 2003 at 04:20

Dr. Pipes is right on target about UNRRWA, especially since the hundreds of thousands of Jews kicked out of the Arab states after 1948 ended up as no-questions-asked Israelis; and that our own Great Shaitan of a country has given passport-holding, voting, and public office-eligible citizenship to more Falastin Arabs than any seven Arab-majority states (Hashemite Jordan excepted) put together. True, in 1948, the Western-dominated UN was still flying by the seat of its pants, and even George Marshall (who was not to my knowledge anti-Jewish) opposed recognition of Israel. But at this late date, UNRRWA has become more of a problem than the ad hoc solution it originally was.

One thing that might be done now that the United States is occupying Iraq (and it seems to me we lose many times more young people to traffic accidents and street crime at home than we're losing to Iraqi guerrillas) is to press the new Iraqi government that we're trying to get started to offer citizenship to over 100,000 Falastin Arabs now resident in Iraq--especially since they're mostly the children and grandchildren of the 1948 refugees. This would be all the more appropriate given that the land of the Babylonian Talmud and resting place of some of the prophets is now Judenrein, having lost well over a hundred thousand Jews right after 1948. Such a course of action would clearly signal that the USA has lost patience with UNRRWA, and will press for solutions it sees at hand.

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