I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
The Jewish Naqba
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In my previous post, I mentioned one predictable omission from Obama’s speech to the Muslim world (easily predicted by Dennis Prager).
Well, in the Op-Ed section of yesterday’s New York Times, André Aciman points out another glaring omission from Obama’s speech: namely, the double standard where the Muslim world is “outraged” over the “plight” of the “Palestinians”, while they do not even acknowledge the even worse treatment to which the Jews of the “tolerant” Muslim countries were subjected throughout the last couple of centuries.
The problem, though, is not just limited to Obama’s speech. In fact, like the omission Prager pointed out, no one would have really expected someone like Obama to have the guts and integrity to bring this up either.
No, the problem is that hardly anyone brings this up. Jews don’t bring it up because, unlike the Palestinians, they don’t harp on past grievances to the point of their own debilitation. The Arabs don’t bring it up because why should they air their own dirty laundry? And if the Jews and the Arabs aren’t bringing it up, why should the rest of the world, right?
So, why is it a problem? For the simple reason that this huge detail in the history of Jewish-Arab relations actually becomes a critical factor when assessing the claims of the Palestinians and assessing their status as “victims”. When compared with what the Jews of Arab countries went through, it is entirely unacceptable to still call Palestinians “victims” to this day when the Jews, suffering from a harsher blow, picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and went on to create the most advanced country in the region in the shortest span of time.
In fact, the “Jewish Naqba” was in many ways much worse than that of the Palestinians—in scope, in lives, in lost wealth, in lost homes, and in displaced people. See Tom Gross’s Mideast Dispatch on The Jewish Naqba for a really eye-opening look at just how much Jews suffered at the hands of the Arabs long before the Arabs’ “Israel excuse” was even born.
And yet, the Palestinians are still there, still in their refugee camps. Why? Because while the Jews all rushed to help one another resettle and recover and grow, the Arabs did just the opposite: they refused to help the Palestinians, refused to give them citizenship in their countries, and preferred to keep them helpless and impoverished if only to be able to hold them up to the world as an example of “Israeli Occupation”.
So, what started as several hundred thousand refugees leaving their homes in Israel at the urging of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt (who, via radio announcements, told the all Palestinians in Israel to leave so that Israel can be properly invaded and destroyed)… has now become millions of “refugees” (most of whom never lived in Israel themselves) still languishing in squalid refugee camps for the sole purpose of making Israel look bad. In the meantime, their rich, fat Sheikh cousins with billions of dollars bemoan their sorry “plight” from the confines of their luxurious palaces while doing nothing more to lift a finger than to comdemn Israel at every opportunity.
So, if we really want to bury the hatchet with the Muslim world and point out the fallacy of their view of America as anti-Muslim (as Obama was right to do), then we should also bring up the fallacy of their view of the Palestinians as victims when, after more than half a century, they passed up on every opportunity for improving their lives and instead embraced terrorism wholeheartedly along with an entire culture of death—something hard to reconcile with a “victim status”.
Fallacy? To say that these people are not ‘victims’ is just plain insensitive.
You could say they are victims of their own inability to wake up and take constructive initiative if you want. You could say they were the victims of the intransigence and insecurity of the rest of the Arab world if you want. But don’t say they’re not victims at all! You are lumping “Palestinians” with “the rest of the Arabs”, which does them a bad disservice. Even if you want to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian nationhood, you cannot deny that their experiences have been distinct from those of peasants in the rest of the Arab world. Heck, you even say a bunch of this stuff in your post, and then proceed to deny them the label of victims!
These people are suffering, and badly. Many of these people live under our control. Now we can’t just flick a magic wand and fix the entire problem. But we as the people who control (if you dislike the accurate ‘occupy’ – we never annexed the land, deal with it) the land do have a responsibility to deal with these people.
The Arab world does, too. But unfortunately, it falls to us to get the ball rolling. We have not made matters any better for them, though sometimes, our hands were tied because they were resorting to violence, as is the case right now.
The status quo cannot and will not go on forever. As Lady Ella once said, something’s gotta give – and you are being cold, to put it mildly.
I’m sorry, but no, calling them victims is irresponsibly misleading and deceptive. That is like saying that someone with self-inflicted wounds “was attacked”.
If you want to say that their *grandfathers* were victims—of their fellow Arab’s false promises, causing them to be refugees—fine. But, that’s about as far as I’d go; any other victim status claims are either self-inflicted or Arab-exploitation-inflicted, either of which demands that you append that explanation to the status to avoid underhandedly blaming Israel.
Yes, they live in squalor. For that you can blame their Arab brethren, like the Jordanians, who refuse to accept them or help them; the United Nations, who perpetuates and compounds this refugee problem by continued UNRWA refugee camps (Palestinians are the only refugees in UN history to be cultivating generations in ever-growing camps, rather than using the aid to move on); and, finally, themselves for wasting every resource they have to destroy Israel rather than help themselves.
When given financial aid, what do the Palestinians do with it? They spend it on weapons. If they used the money they got to date on welfare and living conditions improvements, they would be living in even better conditions than the Israelis. But, no, they chose to spend every dollar possible on weapons and terror. So, no, they are not victims. They are doing this to themselves.
When given an opportunity to vote, do they use that opportunity to vote for visionaries, for reformists, for leaders who would improve their lives? No. They overwhelmingly vote for terrorists like Hamas. So, no, they are not victims. They are doing this to themselves.
When given a huge parcel of land unconditionally (Gaza), complete with power plants, greenhouses, factories, buildings, etc., do they take advantage of that to use that as the huge stepping stone that it is to improve their society? No, they IMMEDIATELY take sledgehammers, axes and torches to the power plants, greenhouses, factories, and buildings and reduce them to rubble. So, no, they are not victims. They are doing this to themselves.
When offered 98% of the land they seek to start their own state back in 2000 (and again by Barak a couple of years ago), did they jump at the chance to take it and reform their lives finally? No, they thanked Israel for the offer by starting another intifada, sending wave after wave of terror into Israel. So, no, they are not victims. They are doing this to themselves.
In short, anyone who still thinks that they can even remotely be considered victims is either ignorant of history, stupid, or blinded by their hatred of Israel.
“That is like saying that someone with self-inflicted wounds “was attacked”. ”
No, it isn’t. Someone with self-inflicted wounds can be a victim of him/herself. We just do not use the word “attacked” in that case for whatever reason. (Attack sounds like something intrinsically external.)
“If you want to say that their *grandfathers* were victims—of their fellow Arab’s false promises, causing them to be refugees—fine.”
Come on. This was far from the only reason this happened. Benny Morris’s work on this is well-known, and even now, when he basically completely reversed himself politically, he stands by his earlier work (if you ask him, we didn’t do a good enough job…) Continuing to tell yourself the version of history Flatbush told you, and accepting it uncritically, is deliberately self-deceptive, and probably comforting, too. So much for your accusation of my being ‘ignorant of history’. And please don’t quote me Ephraim Karsh on this. I’ve read a good amount of both these guys and need a break already.
“But, that’s about as far as I’d go; any other victim status claims are either self-inflicted or Arab-exploitation-inflicted, either of which demands that you append that explanation to the status to avoid underhandedly blaming Israel.”
…So, append the explanation.
As for the rest of your post – sure, you’re right, they deserve so much of the blame. And Obama acknowledged this in the Cairo speech, in case you missed it. But to deny that we have been hostile to them as well is also is to deny history. Now our hostility may be far more justified than theirs, and may not compare to the amount of damage these idiots and sorry people have done to themselves, and maybe not even be enough to earn the Palestinians an unqualified ‘victims’ moniker – but it is still there.
I am a history major, an intelligent person – or so I’ve been told – and a proud Zionist.
“Someone with self-inflicted wounds can be a victim of him/herself. We just do not use the word “attacked” in that case for whatever reason. (Attack sounds like something intrinsically external.)”
Exactly my point. If someone self-inflicted his own wounds, he is the victim of nothing other than himself, and you cannot say that he is the victim of anything else, and you cannot say that he was “attacked”. And, if you DO ever refer to him as a “victim”, you would be sure to append the all-important clarification that he is a “victim” only as far as his own actions go. You wouldn’t go around calling such people “victims” knowing that it would leave others to believe that they were attacked or that it was not self-inflicted.
So, too, the Palestinians are victims of nothing other than themselves, and you cannot say that they are the victims of anything else, and you cannot say that they are “persecuted” or “oppressed”. And if you DO ever refer to them as “victims”, you should be sure to append the all-important clarification that they are “victims” only as far as their own actions go. You wouldn’t go around calling such people “victims” knowing that it would leave others to believe that they were persecuted or oppressed, and that it was not self-inflicted.
Just as you pointed out that it’s ridiculous to describe the self-inflicted wounds as being the result of an “attack” or another person, so too is it ridiculous to describe the self-inflicted squalor and corruption of the Palestinians as being the result of “persecution” or “oppression” or another entity, like Israel.
Therefore, any causes for the so-called victim status and any subsequent actions that are necessary to address that are the sole responsibility of the Palestinians and do not at all fall on the shoulders of Israel who made more than enough offers and concessions over the decades.
As for any “version of history Flatbush told me”, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I never went to Flatbush and the only history I learned is the actual history from news accounts and reliable historical sources. And, I never said anything about Benny Morris or Ephraim Karsh, so you need to relax and stop reading into my words hoping to extract something with which you can argue.
I’m just stating the facts, plain and simple. If you want to play semantic games about their victim status or rewrite history, you’ll have to do it on your own blog. I’m not about revising history to excuse the Palestinians’ self-destructive behavior.
As for our hostility to them, the vast majority of it (especially in recent decades) has been entirely defensive, in response to their terrorism. If you disagree, I challenge you to cite some specific examples of hostility initiated by Israel that was not carried out to deal with initial terrorism.
And for you to say that it’s still technically “hostility” even if it’s justified is yet more semantic games. So, you want to call it hostility even if it’s justified? That’s like calling a police officer who justifiably shoots down a crazed knife-wielding lunatic a “murderer”. You can call him whatever you want, but when the question of blame and culpability come up, no one will be looking at the police officer. In fact, he’d get a medal.
So, let’s get back to the issue at hand, which was the Jewish Naqba and why I have a problem with the world looking at the Palestinians as victims of Israel, while they don’t see what was done in reverse (and more) to the Jews.
Arguing about whether their suffering is self-inflicted or not is not the issue and doesn’t matter, because the WORLD still doesn’t see it that way. Therefore, the issue remains that Israel is still being blamed for their predicament and that is wrong. Do you disagree with that?
Sorry about the Flatbush allegations. I had thought you mentioned it at some pt. Point I was trying to make was that your history was incomplete.
Wtvr. We’re in general agreement so we don’t need to keep pursuing this. I was the one who brought this Second Naqba thing up after all….
-e
It is removed
I’m not sure to what you are referring. If you are referring to a particular link in this post, they all seem to be valid.