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May 07, 2008
1948, Israel, the Palestinians: The True Story
Not surprisingly the mainstream media is using Israel's 60th birthday as an opportunity to scold Israel for, what else, daring to exist. It seems to Seraphic Secret that the best way of celebrating Israel's miraculous birthday is by publishing this fine article by Efraim Karsh, an article which refutes the endless libels that are hurled against the Jewish State. The most recent libel, a blood libel really, is that the Jewish state, should not be a Jewish state. These liberal-Arab-Peace Now critics gently suggest that the Jewish State should convert to a Whatever Status, which translates into a future Islamic State.
Just what the world needs.
Another happy-go-lucky Islamic fascist regime.
I don't get it. Why don't these critics just pick up and move to beautiful downtown Gaza?
I have another suggestion. Let the 22 members of the Organization of Islamic States give up their identity as Islamic states because as we all know, they are each brutal tyrannies founded on the repression of minority religions, the repression of women, homosexuals, and the complete lack of economic transparency. Oh, and except for Iran each and every Islamic country is Judenrein. It's an open secret that the 30,000 Persian Jews live in utter fear and dhimmitude. Members of my Persian community here in Los Angeles often tell me stories of the every day horrors their relatives endure under the thumb of the Iranian secret police.
Anyway, here's the Karsh article from Commentary Magazine.
Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West.
During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of these educated Westerners. The “one-state solution,” as it is called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can expiate the “original sin” of Israel’s founding, an act built (in the words of one critic) “on the ruins of Arab Palestine” and achieved through the deliberate and aggressive dispossession of its native population.
This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian “refugee problem” forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel’s alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950’s, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel’s revisionist “new historians,” and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel’s “original sin,” grudgingly stipulated that there was no “design” to displace the Palestinian Arabs.
The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record. They 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.
To read the complete article, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 08:21 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
There was an Iranian family who lived in our neighborhood. The wife's father even after arriving here, walked in road rather than on the sidewalk. (He was once struck by a car.)
The prevelance of Iranian Jews in Baltimore as well as LA, as I understand is a result of the efforts of Rabbi Neuberger zt"l.
Posted by: soccerdad ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.seraphicpress.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 7, 2008 09:36 AM
I'm at work so I haven't had the opportunity to read the rest of the article. I ordered the book you recommended a few days ago. I also ordered Joan Peter's From Time Immemorial and started reading it last night. It is eye-opening.
Am Chai Yisrael!
Posted by: shira0607 at May 7, 2008 10:27 AM
Did you read the article in today's New York Times? How telling that the author didn't mention the Arab attack on Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem, who had lived there for so long. It was the Arabs who declared war in 1948, against the Mandated partition.
Arab-as-victim seems to be the theme of the day.
Ein lanu l'hishaen ela al avinu shebashamayim.
Posted by: lavender garden at May 7, 2008 12:10 PM
Soccer Dad:
Yes, when Ariel ZT'L attended Ner Yisroel he often told us that Rabbi Neuberger placed special emphasis on being m'karev the Persian bochurim.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 01:31 PM
Shira:
It's a great article so you have a lot to look forward to when you get home.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 01:32 PM
Lavender Garden:
Yup, read Ethan Bronner's article. He didn't bother to mention that all the Arab countries are Judenrein (save Iran) thus their celebrations are never marred by pesky minorities.
Well, what can you expect from the newspaper that buried the Holocaust on page 6.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 01:36 PM
I give thanks to day for israels existence...Israel fights those who wish us harm whilst our govts refuse to...long may she flourish and prosper.
Posted by: thud at May 7, 2008 02:11 PM
I am including this post in the upcoming Haveil Havalim.
Posted by: Jack at May 7, 2008 02:21 PM
Thud:
Thanks so much for the wise words. Keep up the fine work on your blog. And mazal tov on the recent birth of your daughter!
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 02:29 PM
Jack:
So I shouldn't send in the naked picture of Brigitte Bardot and the Israeli flag?
Okey-dokey.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 7, 2008 02:31 PM
All submissions will be reviewed. ;)
Posted by: Jack at May 7, 2008 11:57 PM