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Saturday, June 17, 2006

 

Israel: 'Let Your People Go Home, Already' Say US Congressmen

As if Congressmen paying attention to some transplanted American fool, Justus Weiner, to Israel about Muslim-Christian Palestinian relations wasn't enough, a man who wrote a book in which his lies were refuted by people he interviewed, the book in which he set out to prove that Edward Said was not Palestinian, we now have the usual suspects co-sponsoring another idiotic resolution centering around a concept that has come and gone and come again in order to suit Israel's propaganda agenda.

I read about this in the New York Post. Abby Wisse Schachter informs us in her story riddled with lies that Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) are putting together yet another nutty resolution:

"As Nadler put it in a press release, 'When the Middle East peace process is discussed, Palestinian refugees are often addressed. However, Jewish refugees [from the 1948 war, when the Arab states attacked the just-declared state of Israel] outnumbered Palestinian refugees, and their forced exile from Arab lands must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process. It is simply not right to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees without recognizing the rights of Jewish refugees,' said Nadler."

Schachter explains: "Under the resolutions, when the subject of Middle East refugees is raised at, say, the United Nations, U.S. representatives must ensure 'that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees is matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity.'"

Nadler gets big bucks from AIPAC to shill for Israel and make our Congress a laughingstock.

In the late seventies World Organization of Jews From Arab Countries tried to push the concept of "Jewish refugees," but Arab Jews, proud Zionists, weren't having any of it.

Yehouda Shenhav in "Hitching A Ride on A Magic Carpet," quotes several:

"Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: 'We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations.'

"Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: 'I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists.'

"Ran Cohen stated emphatically: 'I have this to say: I am not a refugee.' He added: 'I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee.'"

Schachter lies with the best of them: "Jews who had lived for generations in countries like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Libya were made to leave their birth countries as soon as Israel was declared."

She also makes a very ignorant statement in reference to whom the resolution represents: "Specifically, non-Palestinian Middle East refugees - Jews and Christians." Does she not know that about fifteen percent of Palestinians are Christian?

Shenhav writes: "The history of the 'Mizrahi aliyah' (immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis)."

Of course its in the interests of the state of Israel to block submission of individual property claims; imagine if it adhered to UN Resolution 194 and paid claims for the ninety-two percent of Palestine it confiscated from its individual personal property owners.

Schachter's bold lie is also countered by Naim Giladi. Giladi prefaces his article, "The Jews of Iraq": "I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism.' I write about it because I was part of it."

WOJAC has been replaced by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, the organization pushing this resolution. The following congressmen, who in addition to favoring starving the Palestinians until they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, support this resolution: Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Reps. Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.), Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.).

In Route 181 an Arab Jew who immigrated from Morocco talks about how well she got along with her Arab Muslim neighbors. She laments that she ever came to Israel. Surely, if Arab Jews who are longing for their homelands in Arab countries wish to return, they should by all means. It is their inalienable right: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

So let your people go home already.

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