Resolution 194

To give an idea of how Efraim Karsh uses real facts to turn  Arab propaganda that has become conventional wisdom on its head in his book Palestine Betrayed, here is what he writes about UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which the Arabs always insist provides for a "right of return":

While underscoring “the right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory at the earliest possible date,” [Count Bernadotte's]  report also considered the possibility of resettlement outside Palestine, with those who chose not to return being adequately compensated for their lost property. “It must not... be supposed that the establishment of the right of refugees to return to their former homes provides a solution to the problent,” the report read. "The vast majority of the refugees may no longer have homes to return to and their resettlement in the State of lsrael presents an economic and social problem of special complexity. Whether the refugees are resettled in the State of Israel or in one or other of the Arab States, a major question to he faced is that of placing them in an environment in which they can find employment and the means of livelihood. But in any case their unconditional right to make a free choice should be fully respected."

This principle was duly incorporated into General Assembly Resolution 194, passed on December 11 after a three month deliberation of the mediator's report, which placed repatriation on a par with resettlement elsewhere. It advocated, in its own words, that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should he permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date,” but also that efforts should be made to facilitate the “resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees."

In tacit acceptance of the Israeli position, the resolution did not treat the refugee problem as an isolated issue but as part of a comprehensive settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors. All of its fifteen paragraphs deal with the facilitation of peace, including the single paragraph that alludes to refugees in general - not “Arab refugees" - in language that could as readily apply to the thousands of Jews driven from their homes in the prospective Arab state and Jerusalem by the invading Arab armies. Moreover, the resolution expressly stipulated that compensation for the property of those refugees choosing not to return “should he made good by the governments or the authorities responsible,” indicating that the Arab states, as well as Israel, were seen as instigators of the refugee problem. be it Arab or Jewish.

It was just these clauses in Resolution 194 that made it anathema to the Arabs, who opposed it vehemently and voted unanimously against it. Equating return and resettlement as possible solutions to the refugee problem; placing on the Arab states some of the burden for resolving it; and, above all, linking the resolution of this issue to Arab acquiescence in the existence of the state of Israel and the achievement of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peaoe were seen, correctly, as rather less than useful to Arab purposes.

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Gulf newspapers agree they aren't anti-Zionist enough

Just a small indication of Arab press objectivity:

The Gulf Press Association (GPA) meeting in the Bahraini capital on Wednesday agreed on several moves in its annual review of the GPA’s activities.

The GPA final statement said that the Assembly also discussed wider issues of concern in the Arab world, “notably the continued enmity and studied and programmed Judaization by the Zionist enemy in Jerusalem, at Al-Aqsa Mosque and in occupied Palestinian lands”.

The statement said that the meeting called upon Arab and Islamic governments to take a “more resolute stand against these malicious plans and protect Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Palestine”.

According to the statement, the Assembly also called upon Gulf and Arab newspapers to “intensify their campaigns to expose the Zionist plans and confront them by all means which preserve the status of Jerusalem for the Arab and Islamic peoples”.

They also voted to censure Saudi Arabia for its Muslimization of Mecca and Medina, and they condemned its apartheid system of not allowing any non-Muslims in those cities whatsoever, especially in light of how Medina used to have a substantial Jewish population that was slaughtered by Mohammed.

Just kidding!

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Book Review: Palestine Betrayed

Efraim Karsh's "Palestine Betrayed" is an answer to the "New Historians'" view of Israel during the War of Independence. In it, Karsh makes a strong argument that the vast majority of the tragedy of the "naqba" was because of Arab, not Jewish, actions.

Karsh makes a startlingly effective case for the fact that the mainstream Zionist leadership wanted to live with their Arab cousins in peace. He brings quote after quote, from Herzl  to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion, that shows that the plan of ethnic cleansing that we are told so incessantly about by Arabs today is simply a fiction. He goes into some detail about Arab-Jewish cooperation immediately after the Balfour Declaration - and before the Mufti.

Much of the blame for the severe deterioration on the relationship between the communities goes directly to Hajj Amin Husseini, who almost single-handedly led the Palestinian Arabs to disaster - as Mufti of Jerusalem, as president of the Supreme Muslim Council, and as president of the Arab Higher Committee. His unwavering anti-semitism combined with his positions of power and his ability to outmaneuver his rivals created an atmosphere where compromise was unthinkable. Karsh also shows that Husseini, far from being a nationalist, was always more interested in a pan-Arab nation - first as part of Greater Syria, but even later he viewed the Arab Palestine as being a stepping-stone to pan-Arab unification. Karsh follows his career from Jerusalem to becoming a Nazi sympathizer.

The centerpiece of the book is the description of the fighting and Arab flight during the first part of the War of Independence. Karsh puts forth a strong argument that the vast majority of Arabs fled their homes as a result of fear, and often in spite of Jewish entreaties to stay put. He goes into detail of the flight of Arabs from Haifa and Jaffa, into the complete breakdown of Arab leadership and the almost non-existence of a unified Arab front, neither within Palestine nor without.(A fascinating detail from Haifa: the Arab flight occurred during Passover, and the rabbinate of Haifa gave a special dispensation for Jewish bakers to bake bread for Arabs during that time to help them out as their infrastructure evaporated.)

According to Karsh, the only expulsion that Israeli forces did to a major urban Arab area was for Lydda, where the Haganah feared that a potential rear-guard fighting force could jeopardize their forces' advances. He does mention a few smaller villages that were depopulated by the Jewish forces, and he gives the military justification for some.

In fact, Karsh provides an appendix listing how many Arabs fled every town and village, roughly 600,000 refugees in total, somewhat less than the UN and Arab claims at the time, which Karsh shows were often inflated.

Karsh also shows pretty clearly that even if the Arabs had won the war, there would be no Palestine today, as Egypt, Transjordan and Syria planned to carve up whatever they could capture. King Abdullah of Transjordan was willing to allow an autonomous but tiny Jewish presence to remain around Haifa.

While Karsh delves into the details of the first phases of the Arab exodus, until roughly June 1948, he all but ignores the next stages that went on until November. This seems to be a shortcoming, as Benny Morris does go into those in detail. Yet even while Morris acknowledges that while there were what he terms atrocities, they were the exception and that most Arab flight occurred from panic even in the latter stages of the fighting.  It is just that the detail he gives is so numbing that it appears that the unsavory acts were far more common than they were in reality.

Another seeming shortcoming of Karsh's book is that he seems to downplay the role of the Irgun and the Stern Gang. While his argument of the conciliatory nature of the Haganah leadership seems well grounded, it appears that Karsh is embarrassed about the undeniably terrorist acts of the Irgun, at times justifying them as reprisals and other times minimizing their importance. However, it seems to me that this needs to be dealt with more forthrightly - both in terms of denouncing their terror as well as in the fact that their acts precipitated much of the Arab flight (and, arguably, the British decision to quit Palestine.) War is never 100% clean.

Karsh's epilogue draws a direct line from Husseini to Arafat and beyond, showing that Arab intransigence has not changed much although it has been packaged differently.

A truly dispassionate history of the conflict is probably impossible to write. Karsh's biases are no less obvious than Segev's or (early) Morris', but they are a necessary counterpoint to the prevailing conventional wisdom. Karsh's arguments are well done and well notated, and he unearths a large number of previously unknown primary sources, especially from British archives. The same events can be used to draw different conclusions, and it is ultimately up to the reader to determine whether the author succeeded in buttressing his point of view with solid facts. For the most part, Karsh succeeds.

The Zionist narrative is at least as valid as that of the revisionists (and far more than that of the Arabs) and it needs to be regarded as such. As such, Karsh's book is invaluable.

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Top Obama advisor loves "Al Quds," finds Hezbollah "interesting"

Wow.

President Obama's deputy national security advisor, John Brennan, is now on the record as saying how much he loves "Al Quds:"

I did spend time with classmates at the American University in Cairo in the 1970’s. And, time spent with classmates from Egypt, Jordan, Palestine from around the world who taught me that whatever our differences in nationality, or race, or religion, or language, there are certain aspirations that we all share. To get an education. To provide for our family. To practice our faith freely. To live in peace and security. And in a 25 year career in government, I was privileged to serve in positions across the Middle East… In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques at Mecca and Medina. I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that pilgrimage. And, in all my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem where three great faiths come together.

By the way, classmates in Egypt in the 1970s did not ever live in "Palestine."

And how could he have seen how the Saudis did their duties as custodians of the mosques in Mecca and Median when the holy cities are closed to all except Muslims?

But the jaw-dropping moment is when this official from the current US administration refers to Jerusalem as "Al Quds."

This all came out on the heels of another Brennan interview where he described Hezbollah as a "very interesting organization:"

The Obama administration is looking for ways to build up "moderate elements" within the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla movement and to diminish the influence of hard-liners, a top White House official said on Tuesday.

John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, met with Lebanese leaders during a recent visit.

"Hezbollah is a very interesting organization," Brennan told a Washington conference, citing its evolution from "purely a terrorist organization" to a militia to an organization that now has members within the parliament and the cabinet.

"There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements," Brennan said.

Moderate elements of Hezbollah? Are those the ones who want to spend two years destroying Israel instead of one?

I can't wait for the administration to reach out to the "moderate wing" of Al Qaeda. Because that's pretty much the only Muslim terrorist organization that they haven't yet made overtures to.

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Aw, I missed Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

Shavuot made me miss most of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

However, it is nice that at least one mainstream cartoonist went ahead and dealt with it in a humorous way. From Over the Hedge:

UPDATE: After reading two comments by the same Pakistani, I see that Pakistan banned Facebook until May 31st as a reaction to "Draw Mohammed Day."

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Chag Sameach open thread (updated)

Just wanted to get a Chag Sameach out there for those in Israel who are about to enter the holiday of Shavuot.

This is not a holiday for the lactose-intolerant.

I will not be posting until Thursday night at least, although I might get a chance to do a little more this afternoon.

If you want to download some interesting Torah articles to learn over Yom Tov, YUTorah.org has a large collection of annual PDF "Shavuot-to-Go" pamphlets each with many articles.

I wish all my Jewish readers a chag kosher v'sameach. If my non-Jewish readers want to get into scholarly pursuits as well, then the article by Yoram Hazony in Azure that I linked to a week back would be a nice place to start.

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Egyptians married to "Zionists" might lose citizenship

From AFP:

A court in Egypt is to rule next month on whether Egyptian men married to Israeli women are to be stripped of their citizenship, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.

"The High Administrative Court will issue its verdict in June," the source said, in a case that highlights Egyptian sentiment towards Israel, more than 30 years after an unpopular peace deal was signed with the Jewish state.

A lower court ruled last year that the interior minister must look into the cases of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, in order to "take the necessary steps to strip them of their nationality."

The interior and foreign ministries appealed the case, saying it was for parliament to decide on such matters.

Nabil al-Wahsh, the lawyer who took the case to court in the first place, told AFP that "Egyptian nationality law warns against marriage to anyone characterized as Zionist."

He said authorities refused to provide the exact number of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, but according to him the number is thought to be around 30,000.

"The majority are married to Israelis considered Zionist, and only 10 percent are married to Arab Israelis," Wahsh said.

Thousands of Egyptians, particularly a large number who lived in Iraq and returned after the 1990 Gulf War over Kuwait, moved to Israel in search of work and married Israeli women.

Al Wahsh is a known crank who is addicted to lawsuits, including one against Queen Elizabeth II.   His assertion that 30,000 Israelis are married to Egyptians, and that 90% of them are married to non-Arabs, is something he just made up.

But judging from the bolded text do you get the impression that the word "Zionist" is code for a different word that he really means?

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Gaza's new Olympic-size pool

From Ma'an:

Gaza's first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.

Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.

Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.

As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.

It is astonishing how similar Gaza is to Buchenwald, isn't it?

Let's hope that the Free Gaza flotilla is bringing in some much-needed goggles.

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Nablus man arrested for "cursing God"

A case of road rage has turned into an arrest for cursing God.

Two motorists were in a heated argument in Nablus. As they screamed at each other, a crowd gathered, and they all heard one of the men curse God in his anger.

The police were called, and the man was arrested. Under Article 273 of the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960, the penalty for this crime is 1-3 years in prison.

A police spokesman said that anyone who insulted Allah or one of the prophets or religions is committing a serious act, one that would raise the ire of citizens, because of the sensitivity of the religious issue.

I can't wait to see the first arrest for someone insulting the divine religion of Judaism!

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Hamas executes three criminals

This morning, Hamas executed three murderers, in what they said was meant to be a warning to others.

This comes soon after Hamas executed  two "collaborators" last month. 

The PCHR condemned the killings, which at any rate goes against Palestinian Arab law that the president must approve all executions.

None of those executed were Hamas members who murdered their Fatah counterparts during the Hamas coup.

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Der Spiegel: IDF soldiers fell to a Facebook spy scam

Der Spiegel reports that a number of IDF soldiers befriended a beautiful woman on Facebook - who might have really been a Hezbollah operative.

The article quotes an Israeli news site as reporting that a Facebook profile belonging to "Reut Zuckerman" was used to lure IDF soldiers to reveal sensitive information over the course of the past year. "Zuckerman," whose photograph showed an attractive woman lounging on a sofa, pretended to be in the IDF herself.

The soldiers allegedly started giving out details of their friends' names, military jargon, secret codes and detailed descriptions of their bases.

In January, some became suspicious and reported the page to their superiors, who investigated it and quickly managed to get Facebook to remove the page. The Israeli site speculated that Hezbollah might have been behind it, although it is unclear what evidence they have of that charge.

The IDF now routinely monitors the Facebook activities of its soldiers.

Social media is now the preferred method of what are known as "social engineering" attacks, and all users of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and web forums can be susceptible to such attempts to gather information.

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Scary anti-semitism at UCSD

Douglas Murray at The Telegraph points out an amazing YouTube video that shows exactly how deep the hatred of Jews is among Islamic students on campus.

As he writes,

I really do urge you to watch till the end to understand quite why it is so shocking. When Horowitz quotes the leader of Hezbollah saying that all the Jews going to Israel will save Hezbollah going round the globe and hunting them down one by one, you may guess what the girl is going to say. But I promise your breath will be taken away by the way she says it.

(h/t Callie and EBoZ)

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Zionism, liberalism and American youth

Peter Beinart, in the New York Review of Books, writes a lengthy article titled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment."

His definition of failure is twofold: first, that the American Jewish leadership is not properly instilling Zionist values in Jewish youth, and second, that they are abandoning liberal values in order to support the (in his viewpoint) extreme right-wing Israeli government. He also despairs that most of the remaining committed Zionist youths are Orthodox, and (horrors!) conservative.

His article and the many weighty responses to it miss some major points.

He is correct in noticing that the majority of Jewish youth in America are indifferent to Israel at best, hostile at worst. The reason, he assumes, is that Jewish youth absorb liberal attitudes that are antithetical to Israel's hawkish policies.

In other words, liberalism - by his definition - is pro-Palestinian Arab, because the PalArabs are the weaker party and liberalism favors the underdog. (He doesn't say this explicitly but it is a major motif throughout his article.) Youths are liberal and therefore they favor the weak Arab side. They have no memory of when Israel was the underdog and Jews were suffering from daily explicit bigotry, which explains - according to this thinking -why their parents and grandparents were naturally pro-Israel.

There is one astonishing omission in this discussion, and that omission is the key reason why American Jewish youth are not more pro-Israel. This omission implies that even the pro-Israel liberals of today have forgotten the very definition of Zionism.

Zionism is the national revival movement of the Jewish people. It holds that the Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

The right to self-determination is a key liberal idea, and Zionism is by definition a liberal movement. The fact that pro-Israel liberals nowadays no longer think in terms of what Zionism really is indicates that they have, over time, begun to assimilate the Arab view of Zionism as an epithet, whose very definition has been changed to "the oppression of the indigenous people of Palestine."

This is the fundamental problem. The liberals should be emphasizing over and over again that Zionism is a  movement of self-determination of the Jewish nation, but instead they themselves believe that it is an oppressive movement.

Zionism never was and is not about oppression. The major forces behind modern Zionism - whether it is classical, revisionist or religious - never planned nor intended to hurt any other group of people, and that is still true today. Even Ariel Sharon in his most hawkish days expressed sympathy and empathy for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. Zionism by definition is indifferent to the Arabs but in practice it has never meant to see them suffer.

But while no Zionist wants to see Arabs suffer, they also do not want to see Jews suffer either. The difference between the "hawks" and "doves" in Israel is simply a disagreement about where the line is drawn to maximize everyone's rights while not impinging on those of the other side. That's it. The vast majority of Israelis and Zionists agree on this basic point.

If liberals understood that simple and basic fact about Zionism, then there would be no problem with conveying that to Jewish youth. Both sides have rights and both sides have claims; the question is how to fairly   solve the competing claims. It is natural to advocate for your own side but that doesn't mean one has to be callous towards the other.

Israel and Zionists have long ago lost the battle for public opinion because the mostly-liberal media does not connect, at all, with the liberal ideal of Zionism. The seemingly strong side is the evil side, in the parody of liberalism that now dominates the thinking among today's left. Young Americans, including Jews, imbibe at this grotesque fountain of "liberalism" that has replaced the real thing in recent years.

That is one side of the problem of today's American Jewish youth.

The other one is far more fundamental, and while it is not surprising that the esteemed commentators don't mention it, it is still disconcerting.

Today's young American Jews have not the slightest clue about their own religion and their own people.

There is an obvious reason why the majority of committed Zionists nowadays are Orthodox - because the majority of committed Jews are Orthodox! It is the Reform and, to a lesser extent, Conservative Jews who have failed their youth in teaching them about their own heritage, and Zionism is dependent on understanding our history and our culture.

I want to make it clear that there are committed Reform and Conservative Jews. They are the distinct minority. There is no doubt that the levels of commitments to Zionism are directly proportional to their commitments to Judaism itself. How many times have we seen people who wear the mantle of their nominal Judaism as they debate against Israel, when they don't have the foggiest notion of what Judaism means?

The sad fact is that today's American Jews are growing up with the idea that Judaism is a hurdle stopping them from having fun. To them, Judaism means forced Hebrew school and bar/bat mitzvah lessons.  Their ability to mouth a few incomprehensible Hebrew sentences by heart is their idea of Judaism, to be discarded as soon as they get past their party.

Zionism cannot exist without a fundamental grounding in Judaism. It doesn't have to be Talmudic Judaism but it has to have a minimal understanding of Jewish history, Jewish law, Jewish customs - and the joy of being  a part of something much larger than oneself.

It is a sad commentary on the state of American Judaism today that a single Birthright trip teaches more about Zionism and Judaism than the previous 18 years combined.

If liberal Jews want to make their children more committed to Zionism, they need to start with a commitment to Judaism that is more than an egalitarian Passover seder and saying Kaddish at a funeral. Only when people understand their own history and culture can they be expected to want to support the idea of self-determination for their people.

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Saudi newspaper complains that Israeli Arabs study the Holocaust

A columnist in Saud Arabia's Al Watan writes about how Israel is mandating that Israeli Arabs include the Holocaust in their curricula.

He's not happy.

Not only is the Holocaust exaggerated, he says ("parts are true, but not near the size that Zionist propaganda claims,") but the Jews were partially responsible for the Holocaust.

For example, the sinking of the Patria in Haifa in 1940 was done by Jews, killing some 267 "Zionists," so (according to his logic) they are also responsible for killing Jewish refugees, just like Nazi Germany!

(The British, under Arab pressure, did not allow the 1800 refugees on the Patria ocean liner to disembark in Haifa and planned to deport them to Mauritus. The Haganah, intending to keep the ship in port for a few extra days in order to convince the British to let the Jews stay, exploded a bomb intended to cause minor damage to the ship to stop that journey. They miscalculated and the bomb sunk the ship.)

The writer concludes that teaching the Holocaust is against Arab and Muslim world public opinion and therefore inappropriate to be taught to those groups.

Just a taste of the moderate Arab world, from a moderate Saudi newspaper.

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The "right of return" is the opposite of human rights

When Palestinian Arabs speak of the "right of return," what exactly do they mean?

Most people would say that it means that Palestinian Arabs and their numerous descendants would have the unlimited right to move back to the homes they left in Palestine in 1948, in line with UN GA resolution 194. That same resolution goes on to say that those who choose not to "return" would be compensated.

In other words, it is characterized as a right for people to be able to determine their own destiny and as a human right for people to live wherever they want to.

This is not true.

There was a Gaza Nakba rally yesterday, and the speakers made very clear that their concept of the "right to return" is the exact antithesis of human rights.

The speakers there complained about "the danger of attempts to dilute the letter and the concept of the right of return and to try a new concept instead, the compensation of Palestinian refugees, or the establishment of houses for them in other lands."

One of the speakers said that the PA negotiating about the "right of return" is "another catastrophe for the Palestinian people, stressing that the right of return is a sacred right, individually and collectively, under which there is no statute of limitations, that can only be achieved only through resistance and the unity of Palestinian ranks, and [he who negotiates on these concepts] is a traitor."

Another speaker supports keeping Palestinian Arabs in camps because they have been the basis of the "Palestinian revolution" and they were where resistance started. He added that even the idea of Palestinian Arabs moving to "Palestine" is anathema.

There is a common thread here: none of the people advocating for the "right of return" in Arabic accept the basic concept of individual choice.

If an Arab in a Lebanese UNRWA camp wants to become a citizen of the country in which he is born, he must be denied that right because it conflicts with this fictional "right of return."

If an Palestinian Arab born in Syria whose grandfather was born in Jaffa wants to move to Jericho upon the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, he is denied that right because it conflicts with the "right of return."

If an Arab in Europe who descended from Palestinian Arabs wants to take money to drop his claim to move "back" to a land he has no interest in living in, he is denied that opportunity because the people who support the "right of return" do not want to dilute their support.

They explicitly say that they prefer Palestinian Arabs to be stateless and miserable in camps in order to keep them angry at Israel. The anachronistic camps which should have been dismantled five decades ago are held up as shining examples of Palestinian Arab unity - a unity that is externally imposed, not by Israel but by Arab leaders who are dead-set against providing basic human rights to those Arabs unfortunate enough to have had their ancestors living in Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, the UNRWA definition of "refugee."

By definition, human rights are individual rights, not collective rights. The "right of return," by taking away all individual choice, is the very antithesis of human rights. It is an aggressive assault on the human rights of millions of people, purposefully cloaked in the false assertion of being a "right."

The nakba exists today because of this assault on human rights perpetrated by Arab leaders and acquiesced to by Western powers, foremost the UN. Even if one believes that Israel is responsible for the start of the nakba, the perpetuation of it for 62 years is squarely the responsibility of the Arab world and the Palestinian Arab leadership who gladly bargain the human rights of their people for their own political purposes.

And the organizations that claim to care most about human rights do not say a word about this open assault on the human rights of millions.

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