I've written much about "the world's collective amnesia" when it comes to the so-called "root causes of the Middle East crisis."
The conventional wisdom today suggests the new state of Israel in 1948 was to blame for the creation of the Arab refugee problem.
The mantra is repeated endlessly by U.S. State Department apparatchiks, Israel's enemies around the globe and even by well-meaning, guilt-ridden Jews.
The entire Middle East peace process is based on this notion: that repatriation of Arab Palestinians in a new homeland of their own will solve the conflict.
There's just one problem with the concept: It's patently untrue.
In fact, I've been collecting, over the years, quotations from the Arab press that reveal the truth of the matter – that Arab aggression toward Israel and the Arab leadership's own encouragement of flight by Arab Palestinians was the main cause of the world's oldest refugee crisis.
Here are some oldies but goodies – not the words of Jews and Israelis, but the actual words of Arabs closer to the time of the events:
"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."
– Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph Sept. 6, 1948
"The Arab state, which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, Feb. 19, 1949
"Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it."
– The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, Aug. 19, 1951
"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963
"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs. … By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
The truth is out there – but you've got to search for it. Especially now.
The candid comments by Arabs in the Arab press continue to this day.
Here's what Jawad Al Bashiti, an Arab Palestinian journalist in Jordan, wrote in Al-Ayyam more recently: "Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the 'Palestinian Catastrophe,' and I will remind you that it still exists. … The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today. During the Little Catrastophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe, the following happened: The first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the 'Arab Salvation Army' came and told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. Arabs fought as if intending to cause the 'Palestinian Catastrophe.'"
The Arabs know the truth – if they read their own history.
There was no Jewish conspiracy to chase Arabs out of their homes in 1948. It never happened. There are, instead, plenty of historical records showing the Jews pleading with their Arab neighbors to stay and live in peace and harmony. Yet, despite the clear, unambiguous words of the Arab observers at the time, history has been successfully rewritten to turn the Jews into the bad guys.
The truth is that 68% of the Arab Palestinians who left in 1948 – perhaps 300,000 to 400,000 of them – never saw an Israeli soldier.
Even more importantly, the revised history has given the guilty a free ride. The Arab states that initiated the hostilities have never accepted responsibility – despite their enormous wealth and their ability to assimilate tens of millions of refugees in their largely under-populated nations. And other states have failed to hold them accountable.
It's bad enough that the Arab states created a small nation of refugees by their actions. It's worse that they have successfully blamed that international crime on the Jews.
Today, of course, this cruel charade continues. The suffering of millions of Arabs is perpetuated only for political purposes by the Arab states. They are merely pawns in the war to destroy Israel.
There were some 100 million refugees around the world following World War II. The Palestinian Arab group is the only one in the world not absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Since then, millions of Jewish refugees from around the world have been absorbed into the tiny nation of Israel.
It makes no sense to expect that same tiny Jewish state to solve a refugee crisis it did not create.
via wnd
