Your Facts Re Ben-Gurion's Statement Are Wrong. The True Story of 1948 and Refugee Issues of Past and Present

Submitted by Sofa Sogood (United States), Jun 10, 2008 at 03:12

Speaking of Bubbles Bursting, since you are reading this website, there really is no excuse for your ignorance regarding the Palestinian issue. But, here is some more reading material for you, if you can bear to read what contradicts your mistaken conclusions. See below a few paragraphs down for a reply and contradiction to your incorrect information regarding Ben-Gurion and his statements.

By the way, were you aware that almost 1 million Jews, more than the number of Arabs displaced from Palestine, were persecuted and forcibly evicted from Arab lands where they had lived for thousands of years. Their property was confiscated and their bank accounts frozen. This eviction was done according to a documented, written agreement of the members of the Arab League. There is no debate about this. The Arabs do not deny it. They are not ashamed of it.

Isn't it odd that Europeans, while abusing and falsely accusing Ben-Gurion and others of evicting the Arabs, never mention this particular fact. There is an irony to this. Because the Jews took in their own impoverished refugees and solved the problem, the plight of those refugees is ignored. Because the Arabs refused to help or take care of their own, the fire is kept under the problem and the Jews are blamed for over 60 years.

And by the way, were you aware that there were many millions, possibly 100 million refugees (Indians, Cypriots, Germans, etc.), who were displaced during WW1 and WW2, all of whom have been re-settled and are no longer refugees. Only the Arabs, for political and racist reasons, have abused their own "brothers" and kept them in an impoverished and desperate Refugee status for the past 60 years. Of all these many millions of refugees, only the Palestinians have now a third generation not re-settled and still considered refugees. Although I don't recall the details, I did read that when Iraq evicted their large Jewish population, there was an agreement of population exchange which, of course, the Iraqis never adhered to.

For some information about the Refugees please read the following.

[UNRWA] The Refugee Curse by Daniel Pipes, August 19, 2003

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1206

Who Are The Refugees? by Daniel Pipes, March 29, 2004

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/03/who-are-the-refugees.html

The Palestinian Claim to a "Right of Return"

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=7&x_article=185

About Ben-Gurion. The "New Historians" misrepresented the words of Ben-Gurion. Efrain Karsh, head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, takes Benny Morris' research to task, and exposes his self-serving, biased and incorrect reportage. Recently, archives have been newly made available which further confirm Karsh's research.

"This happened when, purely by accident, I noticed a glaring contradiction between the English and Hebrew renditions of an October 1937 letter from David Ben-Gurion to his son. The English version had Ben-Gurion say, "We must expel Arabs and take their places."

The Hebrew edition represented him as saying precisely the opposite. An examination of the original document unequivocally settled the matter. It read:

"We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption--proven throughout all our activity--that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs."

http://www.nysun.com/arts/fight-over-1948

Following is a link to Wall Street Journal article by Efraim Karsh, "1948, Israel and the Palestinians: The True Story."

"The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-48) and Israel's early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or disorted by the "new historians," paints a much more definitive picture of the historical record. These documents reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported.

"On the face of it, Ben-Gurion's hope rested on reasonable grounds. An inflow of Jewish immigrants and capital after World War I had revived Palestine's hitherto static condition and raised the standard of living of its Arab inhabitants well above that in the neighboring Arab states.

"The expansion of Arab industry and agriculture, especially in the field of citrus growing, was largely financed by the capital thus obtained, and Jewish know-how did much to improve Arab cultivation. In the two decades between the world wars, Arab-owned citrus plantations grew sixfold, as did vegetable-growing lands, while the number of olive groves quadrupled.

No less remarkable were the advances in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the Muslim population dropped sharply and life expectancy rose from 37.5 years in 1926-27 to 50 in 1942-44 (compared with 33 in Egypt). The rate of natural increase leapt upward by a third.

That nothing remotely akin to this was taking place in the neighboring British-ruled Arab countries, not to mention India, can be explained only by the decisive Jewish contribution to Mandate Palestine's socioeconomic well-being. The British authorities acknowledged as much in a 1937 report by a commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel.

"The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121019679929074973.html?mod=opinion_journal_federation

From Solomonia, April 10, 2008

The Middle East's Only Real Ethnic Cleansing.

Israel is perhaps the worst 'ethnic cleanser' in the history of man.

In 1947 approximately 740,000 Palestinian Arabs living in the area formerly called Palestine.

Today, the West Bank, Gaza and Arab citizens of Israel are over 5 million. There are also over 9 million worldwide who refer to themselves as Palestinians.

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/04/the-middle-easts-only-real-ethnic-cleans/index.shtml

Peoplehood Based on a Big Lie, Frontpage Magazine

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AFBE83D4-1B8C-4D89-910F-7639FFB01062

1695 Book Found, Shows Palestine Population Very Few Moslems.

The land was, on the whole, empty and desolate. The inhabitants were few and concentrated in the cities of Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants of the cities were Jews, the others were Christian. There were very few Moslems, mostly nomadic Bedoins. Nablus (Schem) was different, with a population of about 120 people from the Moslem Natsha family and about 70 Shomronites. In Nazareth, the capital of the Galilee, there were approximately 700 people--all Christians.

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/06/a-book-from-the-middle-east-of-1695/index.shtml

Peoplehood Based on a Big Lie, Front Page Magazine, Eli E. Hertz, May 16, 2008

The Palestinians claim that they are an ancient and indigenous people fails to stand up to historical scrutiny. Most Palestinian Arabs were newcomers to British Mandate Palestine. Until the1967 Six-Day War made it expedient for Arabs to create a Palestinian peoplehood, local Arabs simply considered themselves part of the 'great Arab nation' or 'southern Syrians.'

Palestinian Arabs cast themselves as native people in Palestine--like the Aborigines in Australia or Native Americans in America. They portray the Jews as European imperialists and colonizers. This is simply untrue.

Until the Jews began returning to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers from the late 19th century to the turn of the 20th, the area called Palestine was a God-forsaken backwash that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.

The land's fragile ecology had been laid waste in the wake of the Arabs' 7th century conquest.

Most Arabs living west of the Jordan River in Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza are newcomers who came from surrounding Arab lands after the turn of the 20th century because they were attracted to the relative economic prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British in the 1920's and 1930's.

This is substantiated by eyewitness reports of a deserted country--including 18th century reports from the British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, French author and historian Count Constantine Volney (Travels through Syria and Egypt, 1798), the mid-19th-century writings of Alphonse de Lamartine (Recollections of the East, 1835), Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867), and reports from the British Consul in Jerusalem (1857) that were sent back to London.

Aerial photographs taken by German aviators during WW1 show an underdeveloped country composed mainly of primitive hamlets. Ashdod, for instance, was a cluster of mud dwellings, Haifa a fishing village. In 1934 alone, 30,000 Syrian Arabs from the Hauran moved across the northern frontier into Mandate Palestine, attracted by work in and around the newly built British port and the construction of other infrastructure projects. They even dubbed Haifa, Um el-Amal (the city of work).

Palestinian nationality is an entity defined by its opposition to Zionism, and not its national aspirations.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AFBE83D4-1B8C-4D89-910F-7639FFB01062

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