Nadir, read your history

Submitted by Lester Dent (United States), Oct 30, 2002 at 15:51

...To begin with, your reasoning is full of flaws. You claim to be "neutral", then express ethnocentric sentiments. You seem to believe that patriotism means being blind to the shortcomings of your country, but that is a falsity. From its Founding, the US has heatedly debated issues of governance and policy. That tradition continues today. Did you not miss 42,000 protesting Bush in San Francisco, or 100,000 in DC? True, there are many more who could have counter-protested, but we were busy working or with our families.

It is so convenient to forget that Israel "stole" no land. Land occupied now by Israel was ceded them by the Balfour Declaration, was part of the British Mandate, and was originally part of the UN plan. It was also continuously occupied by Jews for millenia.

"Millions" were not displaced; UN refugee estimates peg the diaspora of Arabs from Israel at about 400,000 -- a figure that is about the same of Jews who left Arab countries to come to Israel. We are talking population exchanges, which have occured frequently throughout history and in greater numbers. While Israel did not put limitations on what Arabs took with them, the Arab countries allowed Jews to take only limited money and belongings in most cases. Israel also did not "expel" their Arab population, nor did they put them into camps. Arabs were told by the Arab countries to leave, who planned to invade Israel after the UN declaration and wipe them all out. It would have made this genocide easier if they didn't have to worry about killing Arabs. The camps were established because Arab nations refused to accept their Arab brothers for the most part, as they do today. Israel WANTED their Arab population, as these Arabs had, for centuries, provided much of the manual labor of the region.

By not speaking out against terrorism, by not denouncing jihad but rather excusing it with faulty history, you demonstrate where your loyalty lies -- not with the country that provides you a better life than you could ever experience "back home", but with the country YOU LEFT.

Being patriotic means that one owes allegience to one's country, and while trying to help it find the right course (in part by voting -- how often have you voted?) one must defend it against enemies who are bent on its destruction...

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