Video nasty

Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA

I have tried in vain to arrange a meeting with the British Council in Jerusalem. I have managed to obtain a meeting with their branch in Nazareth where this problem was discussed with me. However, it was not suggested that they were going to be so obviously anti Israel in their approach. I gained the impression that personnel there work mainly with the Arab communities and know next to nothing about Jewish Israel. I gave them a positive boost on my blog because of their 'Football for Peace' initiative. But was unimpressed by their lack of interest in Jewish issues or sensibilities.

Frances Waddams, Anglican Friends of Israel

Anyone wanting to view an informative documentary on the British Mandate period based upon archival film and eyewitnesses, need look no further than HaTikvah Trust's excellent 'The Forsaken Promise'. Will Ms Price be interviewing the commander of 'The Exodus' or members of the Jewish community in Hebron, ethnically cleansed in 1929? I doubt it!

Mike

No doubt Melanie would also lable Ilan Pappe as 'ignorant, bigoted, pathological'. Read: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe (Oneworld Publications, 2006) Hardcover: 336 pages ISBN: 1-85168-467-0

J. Isaacs

Is Judy Price perchance related to Katie Price, the performance artist (this time in the plastic arts) who bears the apposite alias "Jordan"? If so, perhaps Judy could hire Katie (at a relative's discount) with Arab state funding, as David T. suggests, to star opposite Paul Newman in a remake of the archive British mandate film "Exodus" based on Leon Uris's book. This would sell out and make Judy as famous as Katie rather than vanish back into the obscurity from which she has so briefly and surprisingly emerged. Tickets anyone?

Mike

Postscript. Judy Price along with over 1300 signatories is a member of 'Jews for Justice for Palestinians'; 'a network of Jews who are British or live in Britain, practising and secular, Zionist and not. We oppose Israeli policies that undermine the livelihoods, human, civil and political rights of the Palestinian people'. Hear, hear!

Stuart

Melanie, I hope that readers will pay attention to the map you used to illustrate your article. The Orange coloured shape is the Jewish National Home that was created by the League of Nations. We will all be familiar with the map of Israel today perhaps 60% of the original. Note the large chunk on the right that was 'stolen' to create Jordan. A double-deal between Britain and the Hashemite Kingdom. Instead of expanding Israel has contracted.

Zachary

The following definition of the word "Quisling" is from Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia: In contemporary usage, "Quisling" is synonymous with "traitor", and particularly applied to politicians who appear to favour the interests of other nations or cultures over their own. In American English, the term is less well known than the equivalent phrase "Benedict Arnold." Perhaps Ms. Price and other Jews of her ilk ought to consider this when they say "Naqba" and do other things that favor the interests the Jewish state's enemies. Israel's reestablishment was a blessing, not a disaster, as far as I am concerned.

Ahmad Hamdan

Stuart... Jordan is not part of Israel and it will never be (except in your dreams, you and other 'ignorant, bigoted, pathological'persons). Jordan is a country, created just as Israel was created. And just note the part of the orange map west ot Jordan river and down to the gulf of Aqaba, this is Palestine, and it was stolen to creat Israel. It is the same argument, so stop looking to the world as if you were a superhuman, because you are not. (I hope that the neutral and democratic moderators, who respect liberty of expression, will post this one, not like the previous post sent 2 days ago).

kate

Price and others have never heard of the "Promised Land" then? I thought every non-Arabic country was taught this in school.

Ahad Ha'amoratzim

Ahmad Hamdan, before you start calling Stuart names, go back and read what he said. He does not say that Jordan is part of Israel. He does say that Jordan was part of the British Mandate of Palestine as conferred by the League of Nations for the purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland. I do not understand why you consider it 'ignorant, bigoted, pathological'to point this out, when it is documented historic fact. As to your advice to "so stop looking to the world as if you were a superhuman" ("you" being Jews? Israelis?) it is not that Jews or Israelis view themselves as superhuman; they simply refuse to share the view of those who view them as subhuman.

N. Simon

Obviously there's no mention of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands who were subject to the most appalling pogroms, racism, and random hangings during the Islamic rule. Newly born Israel took in 60% of them.

The Arabs would like a Jew-free middle east, and contrary to misinformation, the Jews, at best, were treated as dhimmis, second class citizens. Most Arab states are now Judenrein.

It's hardly surprising that the Mufti of Jerusalem,Hajj Amin Al Husseini became such great friends with Hitler. He'd been campaigning against Jews and murdering thousands of them BEFORE Nazism or the creation of the Jewish state. He went on to lead the Bosnian Waffen SS, and was the inspiration for Hitler's "final solution".

Misinformation about how and why the Jews of Iraq were forced to leave abounds on the Internet. A favoured myth is that Jews and Arabs lived in harmony until the creation of Israel. Another is that 'the Zionists' set off bombs to scare the Jews into leaving in 1950. This timeline extracted from The Jews of Iraq: a forgotten case of ethnic cleansing by Carole Basri clearly shows, however, that persecution and insecurity dogged the Jews as early as the 1930s.

1918,19 and 20: Fearful of local Muslim rule, Jews petition the Civil Commissioner for Baghdad for British citizenship, but are refused it.
1932: Iraq declares minority rights would be protected, but declines to appoint observer to supervise minority guarantees. Some 600 Assyrians massacred in 1933.
1932: German Charge d'affaires, Fritz Grobba, publishes instalments of Mein Kampf in Arabic daily newspaper. Radio Berlin begins Arabic broadcasts.
1934 - 36: 600 Jewish clerks dismissed from government
1934: regulation introduced requiring Jews to deposit £50 to travel abroad.
1935: state secondary schools impose quotas on Jewish students. Hebrew and Jewish history instruction forbidden. Only the Bible can be read without translation.
1936: government-licensed Jewish businesses must have a Muslim partner.
1939: Iraqi public school system begins to follow a Nazi education model.
1936: Three Jews murdered in Baghdad, one in Basra. Bomb thrown into synagogue on Yom Kippur.
1936 - 39: despite the Chief Rabbi officially dissociating himself from Zionism and a condemnation of Zionism signed by 33 Iraqi Jewish leaders, seven murders of Jews and six bombings take place.
1941: In the interregnum following a pro-Nazi coup, 179 Jews are killed and 911 houses looted in the Farhoud pogrom.
1947: Iraqi Foreign minister threatens expulsion of Jews as part of coordinated Arab League plan if Partition of Palestine goes ahead. 1948: state of emergency declared; 310 Jews court-martialed.
1948: Jews receiving letters from Palestine accused of Zionism.
September 1948: Shafik Ades, Iraq's richest Jew, hanged.
May 1948 - Dec 1949: 800 - 1,500 Jews dismissed from public service. Jewish banks lose their foreign exchange trading licences. Restrictions on high school and university students.
Jewish community 'donates' 113,000 dinars to war effort against Israel. Fines collected from Iraqi Jews: $80 million. Travel ban on Jews and on buying and selling property. Retroactive tax on Jews. Property of all Jews who had emigrated since 1933 confiscated. Government ceases to service Jewish areas. Property of Jewish prisoners impounded. Jewish newspapers shut down.
Feb and March 1949: 100 Jews tried for connections to Zionism.
March 1950: Iraqi Parliament Ordinance permits Jewish emigration upon forfeiture of citizenship. Some 120,000 Jews register to leave.
March 1951: Law no. 5 deprives all stateless Iraqi Jews of their property.

To see such ignorance is not new to me but it is disturbing that it underlies so much hostility, with the media seldom if ever giving access to the true history of the region.

The boundaries of the Jewish state did in fact include all this territory, extending into what is now Jordan. The Hebrew-Christian Scriptures illustrate this as the land allocated to the 12 Tribes is detailed.

The name "Palestine" is the 'anglicised' term for "Syria Palaestina", the name given by the Romans when they defeated the kingdoms of Israel & Judah in AD135. A name given to utterly remove any Jewish connection from the territory, when Jerusalem was simultaneously renamed "Aelia Capitolina".

From that time even to the rebirth of the Jewish State in 1948 a Jewish presence STILL remained in the Land despite the area being conquered by numerous foreign occupiers.

After the Roman occupation ending in 330AD, the region that eventually became known as "Palestine" was then occupied by numerous empires; Byzantines (330-638AD), Arabs (Fatimids & Abbasids), and Turks (Seljuks) (638-1099AD), Crusaders (1099-1291AD), Mamluks (1291-1516AD), Ottomans (1516-1917AD), British (1917-1948AD). Israel was reborn in 1948 and exists to the present day.

"Palestine" itself has NEVER existed as a 'sovereign' nation with it's own people, culture and capital city.

Until 1948 it was just a regional land occupied by foreign empires. Despite the repeated use of the term "Palestine" in political and media circles, it remains a fact that "Palestine" as a social, political, national, regional, religious or geographic entity of any description does not exist at this time and has not done so since 1948.

Yet the historic Jewish homeland, which Jews have occupied in varying numbers for approaching 4,000 years is now classed as illegally "occupied" by .... Jews.

Stuart

Ahmad Hamdan, I am ALSO grateful to the Moderators in allowing your mis-quote of what I posted to stand. Personally, I enjoy my status as "Superhuman" and I would always be respectful towards people like you who make the kind of comments you made. But then you made a faux pas (as ONLY a "Superhuman" could detect). You say that "Jordan is a country, created just as Israel was created" and you say Israel was "Stolen". So, that must mean that Jordan was "Stolen" too. So, who do you think Jordan should be returned to? Perhaps it should be the Palestinian National home since it obviously isn't Israel. Ah, then we remember that Arafat DID try and start a war in Jordan but was kicked-out. Seems like The Palestinians just can't have other people's countries.

john

Alas, Ahmad Hamdan, if theft there is, then the Sheikh of Araby or the current King of Jordan's family and his beduin raiders were in at the beginning. The world needs to go back to the the original League of Nations Mandate and fold most of the West Bank back into the Kingdom. We shall then observe that the Arabs got 78% of the territory carved out of this once Ottoman area and the Jews, the original, indigenous inhabitants a mere 22%. The Palestinians will then have the one state solution they so fatiguingly crave. And they can, there, assiduously practise their fascist salute which I observed their love of on the Al Jazeera documentary about the Palestinians in Lebanon, seen only afew days ago. Ask Ragih Omar and the Lebanese film-maker. Interestingly enough, the Palestinian youth leader so attentively instructing his charges in the salute, confirmed that the Palestinians were induced to leave by the Arab High Command saying that the Palesyionians would be back home in a few days.

Ahmad Hamdan

Stuart, as long as you think you are better than others, then you will never get peace in that region. I said that Israel was created on a "stolen" land as a counter argument using your same argument when you said that Jordan was created on a stolen land. To live in history, and try to build our present on history is the best way to keep hatred and violence between people. We can continue to talk about percentages, divine promises "I am talking about all religions" and whatsoever we want, divine or not, but this will not help us (all of us). Life is too short to talk about history, and to base our life upon what we see on television (Al-Jazeera, CNN, BBC, Arab TVs, Israeli TVs). We should try to accept each other, to RESPECT each other, and we should try to build a life for all of us. But our problem (all of us, all races, religions, and whatsoever difference) is that we only see the differences that exist between us. Peace can only be built by RESPECT, ACCEPTANCE, and COOPERATION, never by force. But if somebody want to get peace by force, let him/her try, because he/she will never get it eternally, as force isn't eternal, and history changes. (I am not trying to give morals here, but I think that this is what we really need now, not a discussion on who has stolen what, and who killed whom).

Manuel

Ahmad Hamdam (2.06am) Your sentiments are fine; so all we all need now is for the rest of the Islamic world to accept Israel as a sovereign state and respected neighbour and to cease once and for all time, trying to destroy it and it's Jewish inhabitants. When Islam takes and makes this gigantic step, peace will break out and the region will flourish, economically, culturally, politically and socially. Is the Muslim world able to do this....now?

Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA

Ilan Pappe has been accurately described by Mike, above. Well done, Mike!

Ahmad Hamdan

Manuel, Muslim world is able to do this, but it is not only Muslim world does need to do this regarding Israel. Are Israel and jewish people able to return back Palestinians' lands, and accept the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state once and for all the time? (You know, peace is not one sided action, it has to be done by both sides, and actions HAVE to be done by both sides, as I will never accept your existence if you don't accept mine, and I repeat, peace can't be won by force, because Force is not eternal for one side or the other).

Manuel

Ahmad. What "Palestinians' lands" will you be refering to? If you refer to the Mandate maps and plans you will clearly see those that were defined for the Jewish state and those for Arabs. The east bank of the Jordan was defined for the former but was illegally seized by Jordan in 48. The Jordanians then refused any Jewish visits to Judaism's holiest place, the Western Wall of the ancient temple, in fact they desecrated the area. With regard to Arab refugees from '48 - those that left did so at the behest of the Arab armies high command, anyone left would be considered a Jew and be slaughtered by the advancing Arab armies - well that was the strategy. At the same time the Jewish populations of Arab states were persecuted, see your history books, before about 800,000 managed to leave/escape their countries. These people didn't sit around in desert camps waiting for a return to the lands of birth; the fledgling Jewish state took them in, housed, educated and gave them a life free of dhimmy status. And what did the Arabs do for their refugees and why? We all know the answers. The Arab and muslim world has tried for 60 years to wipe out Israel on the basis that Jews "don't belong". Well Ahmad, Jews have been habitating "your" Judea/Samaria/Israel for many centuries, long before Arabs and certainly well before Islam. As for a so called "Palestinian" people - there is no such people, yes Arabs originating from the likes of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq etc. The name is another myth and deception perpetrated upon the world. History shows, both modern and ancient, that there are no Palestinian lands to return. Each and every time the Arab enemies have tried to liquidate Israel the Arabs have lost more territory (e.g.West Bank & Gaza), including the rewturn of east Jerusalem and the temple walls to its Jewish. In the meantime the Jews ensured freedom for all to enjoy his religion, including protecting the Al Aqsa mosque (in contrast to the Jordanian desecration of the Temple site). Ahmad, you suggest a return of "Palestinians' lands" as a precursor to peace - fine. Israel has shown itself willing in this respect - peace with Egypt = Sinai returned, peace with Lebanon = Israel withdrew all forces, Gaza returned to Arab control = daily rocket attacks by Hamas. Israel needs cast-iron guarantees that it's existence is secure as a Jewish state and it will not be the target for continuous and condoned terroist attacks, from all Arab and muslim enemies, including Iran. Ahmad with that I'm sure we will get the peace we both so dearly wish. Shalom & Salem.

J. Isaacs

Ahmad Hamdan does it again. Having apologised last week for spelling Jewish with a small J and Palestinian with a large P and excusing this as merely "the habbit" while promising not to repeat it, he has now returned to his former politicised spelling habit. Could all his comments, therefore, be construed as insincere?

Ahmad Hamdan

J.Issacs, I apologize again, but it is really the habit, and it has nothing to do with politics. If you just look to my previous post, you can find (and in the same line) Israel with capital letter two times, so if it was politisized, then I would write it in small letter. Stop looking to tiny little things to legitimate your hatred. Writing Arabs, Muslims with small letters would not hurt me at all, but if your self esteem would be hurt if someone writes Jewish or Israel with smal letter, then its your problem (and if your force and existence depends on how I should write Israel or Jewish, it is also your problem, and the debate is uselss). Happy new year.

Mikey

I do not know who "Mike" is, but I am very surprised that Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA is promoting the discredited Ilan Pappe. Benny Morris, in an article for the New Republic http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory/04-03-22benny-morris-The%20New%20Republic-1.pdf completely destroyed Pappe for his views. In fact, you would hard pushed to locate such a highly critical review of any author in such a journal. Whilst Pappe did respond to that review, it was quite lame and TNR, to the best of my knowledge, refused to publish it. Dr. Irene Lancaster should know better.

J. Isaacs

Ahmad Hamdan's apologies are quite meaningless. He compounds his insincerity with a spate of new spelling mistakes (including my name) and a false accusation that I hate him. It is difficult to rouse oneself to hatred of an incontinently bad speller or of someone who wishes to legitimate his own bad spelling. Rather, he should be given an English dictionary and a copy of Fowler's "Modern English Usage" as a New Year present.

Ahmad Hamdan

Correction, I wrote Issacs instead of Isaacs, and I am sorry for this error. Also, I wrote smal instead of small. I hope this point is very interesting for you, J.Isaacs, and that it would help you in your life.

Mark Rogers

I have read all the comments, but am still baffled as to what this has to do with "Art"? Or does the Arts Council have a Goebbels-like agenda to subsume politics under aesthetics and/or the other way about. Isn't it about time we stopped paying our taxes?

J. Isaacs

Thanks to Ahmad Hamdan for hoping to interest me and assist me in my life. Or is his wish a poor attempt at sarcasm? Either way, it is too incovenient to attempt to derive any meaning at all from his words and best (for helping one's life) not to try further.

Alan Mackie

Manuel (December 24), your reading of history is partial and viewed entirely through a Western prism. The myth that Palestine was a land without a people ready to be united with the Jews, a people without a land has been debunked by the ‘New Historians’ chief among whom is Bennie Morris. No fainted hearted leftie, Morris had a near breakdown squaring his findings with Israel’s claim to the moral high ground. His research concluded there had been ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1947/48 (though this did not constitute, in his eyes, a Transfer Policy) and he squared the circle by paraphrasing Lady Macbeth: if ethnic cleansing were to be done it were better it were done quickly, his only regret being that it was not more thorough as it would have obviated the terrible dilemma Israel now faces with its indigenous population. Certainly Jews have lived in Palestine for millennia but so have a host of other races and creeds, amongst them Christians and Muslims and above all Palestinians or the Philistines as they are known in Arabic. Before the Balfour Declaration and the start of British sponsored immigration the Jewish population of Palestine was 8%. At the time of the Partition Plan in 1947 it still only represented around 30% yet the new Jewish state was allocated 52% of the land which became 78% at Independence under the guise of prosecuting a ‘defensive’ war. What I find depressing about most of these blogs is their blinkered mindset. Most people deeply sympathised with the plight of homeless Jews after the Second World War but that did not justify the West assuming the right to requisition another people’s land to atone for its, or should one say Christianity’s anti Semitism and the horrors of the Holocaust. In July 1943 Churchill confirmed his commitment to a Jewish National Home in Palestine by noting that at ‘the end of war we shall have plenty of force with which to compel the Arabs to acquiesce in our designs.’ The toxic legacy of imperialism with its assumptions of might is right poisons the West’s relations with the Muslim world.

George

"ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1947/48" = utter vicious nonsense, of the usual antisemitic kind. Ethnic cleansing is a polite word for genocide. There was no genocide. The Arab population of Israel is much higher now than it was in 1948. There are Arab members of parliament. There are Arabs in all professions. The antisemitic attempt to portray Israel as being like the Third Reich is contemptible.

George

"Certainly Jews have lived in Palestine for millennia but so have a host of other races and creeds, amongst them Christians and Muslims and above all Palestinians or the Philistines as they are known in Arabic" --- trying to equate the so-called 'Palestinians', who are Arabs (i.e. invaded a country that by then had been the Jewish homeland for 1500 years, and for 1000 years before the name 'Palestine' was invented by the foreign Roman occupiers) with the Philistines is pure fantasy ..... "Before the Balfour Declaration and the start of British sponsored immigration" -- pure fantasy. Check when Tel-Aviv was founded, never mind the new towns of the 19th century .... "yet the new Jewish state was allocated 52% of the land" --- pure fantasy. 78% of the land was removed illegally over 25 years earlier and made into the invented country of Trans-Jordan, with an imported Saudi robber baron as its king. You work out what 52% of 22% is .... "which became 78% at Independence under the guise of prosecuting a ‘defensive’ war." -- anyone who thinks that it was 'defensive' in quotation marks, given the openly declared genocidal programme of the invading armies of Iraq, Egypt and Syria, has an agenda that is all too clear to those of use who know the history of the region.

Alan Mackie

George, you make my point. The idea that Israel could have been formed without ethnic cleansing beggars belief as much as it does to suggest the West was won without clearing the indigenous American Indians. This is not anti Semitic; it is plain common sense. The Israelis are not the only people to have displaced another; ethnic cleansing is the very stuff of history as nations have been formed and reformed However the world has moved on from the nineteenth century. The UN charter—established ironically to ensure there would never be a repeat of Nazi aggression—specifically forbids the acquisition of land by war. Arguably the expansion of the Jewish territory in 1948 from 52% to 78% of mandatory Palestine broke this principle. It has always been excused on the grounds that Israel was forced to fight a ‘defensive’ war which is why the issue of ethnic cleansing is so sensitive. Another anachronism of Zionism is the idea that you can have a democracy based on race. Given that time is not on their side and these internal contradictions are only sustainable so long as Israel is backed by US power, you would have thought its leaders would have made REAL peace gestures to the Palestinians: starting with accepting that 78% of the land was a bloody good deal and that in the interests of a settlement some might even be ceded back. An accommodation on Jerusalem and a settlement of the Right of Return were possible had Israel’s leaders genuinely recognised the historical injustice done the Palestinians by the creation of their state. Instead they shabbily used the Oslo Peace process to expand the settlements and steal water. The key issue in all this is whether Jewish rights take precedence over universal human rights. Branding ideas and indeed facts that don’t fit your own solipsistic reading of history anti Semitic won’t wash.

Alan Mackie

In reply to your second blog; I see you do not deny the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine was 8% pre Balfour. There was an indigenous settled population in Palestine whose existence was threatened and eventually destroyed by the creation of a Jewish state. Trans Jordan is a complete canard. The Jordanians are a desert people the Palestinians predominantly farmers. To suggest that Trans Jordan be thrown into the equation is a bit like parcelling out Scotland and allocating the Highlands to the Arabs while the Jews kept the lowlands or in London giving the Arabs the suburbs and the Jews the City and the West End. Not a bad deal! And whose land was it anyway for Churchill et al to parcel out?

George

The very concept of a separate 'Palestinian' nation is a canard: they were invented in 1963. T-J is not a canard, its creation out of 78% of what had previously been known (for 2000 years) as 'Palestine', and its declaration as Judenrein, are historical facts. The Jews ARE the indigenous people: historical fact. Denying their right to reclaim their country is like calling Native Americans in Oklahoma 'invaders who displace the native Anglo-Saxons'. Those who deny these historical facts have a clear anti-Jewish agenda, however much they try to dissemble and twist and turn.

Manuel

Alan Mackie (all)- You have blown all your credibility and arguments by assereting that todays' so called 'Palestinians'are direct descendents of the Philistines. There is no such relatiuonship, this being another 'inspired' piece of propoganda and misinformation by Arafat, attempting to delegitimanise the Jewish connection with the area, similar to other rewritings of history by the Arabs - Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, Jews never inhabitted the area etc, whilst both Jewish & Christian books clearly show these assertions to be lies. Of course the Arabic language will have a name for Palestine as it does for England, France4 etc. but that does not prove a direct link with any peoples. Your "land without people ready to be united with the Jews" is a gross & crude attempt at the deligimisation of this people's claim - there have always been Jews there (sorry to tell you the Romans did not manage to "cleanse" the land of all Jews), the Jews were there long before the Arabs and therefore the Jewish people have never ever, through milenia, forgot their justifiable claim and yes, right to the land of Israel. When did you firt hear of a Palestinian people? Certainly not before 1969 - another 'inspired' figment of Arafat's imagination. Upto then, they were all correctly called by their true ethnic name, Arabs. You wish to blame only the Jews for the Arab refugees of yesterday & today. All you have to do is research into the Arab strategy in 47/48 to find the real cause - firstly, the Arabs didn't want a Jewish independent state and therefore commited themselves to destroying this presence at all costs, using force of arms; secondly, to secure this goal the Arab's Joint High Command issued a proclomation in 48 that all Arabs should leave their homes, thus giving the invading armies and in their minds the victors. a free field of fire - all remaining peoples would be legitimately considered to be Jews and would be slaughtered in the victory push. There is your cause of the refugee proiblem - these peoples moved of their own choice and by doing so, forfeited all right to return to their former homes - that's how International Law works. Every war Israel has had to fight has been a legitimate war of defence, no inverts necessary, they were for real & justifiable defence; in 48 when 7 Arab armies declared war in attempting to destroy the new born state, in 56 (Suez year) when Israel demanded Egypt cease almost daily terror attacks by it's own Fedayeen across from Gaza with Egypt choosing to continue, in 67 when Nasser told the UN peace keeping forces in the Sinai to clear out & then shut the Straits of Aqaba to Israeli shipping & amassed trops in Sinai waiting to attack, in 72 when Sadat launched the attack on Yom Kippur. Every time the Arabs lost more territory via their acts of aggressive war. Will we get a REAL HOT peace? You need to come to terms that the Jewish people, race and nation have a very legitimate right to the Land of Israel, or what we will now accept as the State of Israel, the Arabs a need of a home in that area. This will only come about when the Arab world decides it has more to gain by accepting Israel and the Jewish people's right to exist within secure borders, free from all attacks, terrorists and others and bring themselves and their people into the 'promised lands' of security, economic growth, good education, housing, health and maybe, in the future, some form of democracy and the demise of their current dictatorships. They must also understand that their is not going to be a return of any 'refugees' into Israel-they sowed the seeds in 48 & must now reap their harvest; Jerusalem, west and east, is a Jewish city, built by Jews long before Arabs, Christianity and Islam, always inhabitted by Jews, the holiest Jewish site is in the east of the city, Jews pray towards the city (Muslims pray to Mecca - that tells us an awful lot).

Ahad Ha'amoratzim

Alan Mackie, you seem to be in a bit of historical denial yourself. Apart from denying that Mandatory Palestine was on both sides of the Jordan, you forget that Israel tried in 1967 to make "REAL peace gestures to the Palestinians: starting with accepting that 78% of the land was a bloody good deal and that in the interests of a settlement some might even be ceded back." Without accepting your 78% figure, let me point out that shortly after the 1967 war, Israel offered to return EVERY SQUARE INCH of the land captured in 1967, with the execption of Jerusalem, in return for peace and recognition. The Arabs responded with the infamous "three noes of Khartoun" -- no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. As to your fantasy that the Palestinians have anything to do with the ancient Phillistines, or that in 1948 or 1967 they constituted a separate ethnic group from the other Arabs, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at the ignorance of that region's history.

Harvey (not FRSA)

This reminds me of a variant on the well-known Basil Fawltyism... DON'T MENTION THE NAQBA!!!

BJ

There are two rather tedious strains of denial which run through this thread. Firstly, that the Palestinians do not exist (in other words they are just Arabs like all the others and should go and live in Jordan as Melanie Phillips has previously suggested) and secondly, the Nakba never happened because the Arabs left of their own free will (in other words the process now known as ethnic cleansing, never occurred in Palestine and the right of the refugees to return can continue to be ignored). As was asked on a previous thread - Name another national group which believes it exists but in fact doesn't. Nobody has. The second strain of denial - that the Nakba never happened has now been so comprehensively refuted by the serious historians writing on the subject the argument has moved on. It is difficult to be hopeful about the prospects for a resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict but I wish you all a happy New Year nevertheless.