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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Twisting Facts About Israel and "Palestinians": Who's David and Who's Goliath? Academics Need a History Lesson No Longer Bastions of Critical Thinking

Nadene Goldfoot
How many people realize that both Jews and Arabs living in Israel before 1948 were called "Palestinians?"  The Jewish family that lived on our block in Portland, Oregon, the Padrows, were Palestinians from Tel Aviv.  He was not only a druggist but dentist as well, and their son, Ben, wound up teaching at Portland State in Speech and Drama.  Ben was the editor of the Jewish Review for several years as well.  Their daughter, Joan, was my playmate and friend.  While in grammar school she was tested and found to be the brightest in the school.  What brought them to Portland?  Probably Arab uprisings in 1929 and a brother living in Portland already who was teaching Hebrew. 

Both the Jews and the Arabs were given a chance to have their own country, and the Jews accepted the offer.  The piece of land they were offered turned out to be much smaller than what they had been promised originally by the British, but they took what they could.  The Arabs, on the other hand, refused.  They refused because they wanted it all.  They wanted it all because they didn't want the Jews to have any, and they wanted what they had.  It wasn't important to them to have a country, anyway.  They had only wanted jobs. 

It was the Jews who needed their own homeland.  They had been wanderers for 2,000 years after losing this very land to the Romans, and life for them for 2,000 years was not very nice.  It ended with the Holocaust where 6 million were slaughtered, but that was not known to the leaders to who accepted the offer from the British, though they knew at the time that many Jewish lives had been  lost because they didn't have their own land. 

Jews are the smallest religious group of the major three religions.  Jews make up only less than 1% of the total world population.  They are almost extinct.  Israel, created May 14, 1948, came into being as a haven for these remaining Jews.  Germany almost carried out their vile goal of their extermination.  Now it seems that the Muslims, especially Iranians,  are trying to continue with that goal.  After all, Arabs were on the same side in WWII.

The "Palestinians" are telling the world that they are the underdog by saying that Israel is the Goliath and that they are the David.  Leave it to them to borrow from Jewish history such terms.  They've been claiming Jewish artifacts and holy sites in Israel as theirs as well.  In fact, their mosque, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, is built over the Jewish Temple.  It's their custom to do such things to declare dominence.

The intelligencia have been succored into believing such a tale being that little Israel has up to date weaponry and the Arabs up to the past few years have not.  Because of this and that the Jews regard  all life as precious has brought about few deaths for Israel while there have been more deaths on the Palestinian side.  That's because of their low regard for  life, shown by putting their missile launchers amid their own civilians.  Then they acheive the goal of garnishing negative publicity for those "terrible Israelis if their civilians are killed." 

Talk about Goliath!  The Muslims, who all  help the Palestinians, have 22 states just in the area of the Middle East.  In total, there are at least 48 Muslim majority states in the world; 49 if you count the "Palestinians" of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who are not the state of Palestine as yet because of their own negativity.  There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world.   Egypt's population alone has 79,089,650 or more today.  Israel has 7,590,758. Of these, 1.4 million are Israeli Arab citizens.

 About 311,100 Jews live in Judea and Samaria, 18,100 live in the Golan Heights and  186,929 live in East Jerusalem.  New York City has about 8,008,278 people.  Tel Aviv-Yafo has 3.219 million, Haifa has 1.027 milllion and Jerusalem, the capital, has 768,000.  We're lucky if we have 6 million Jews, the very number we lost in the Holocaust and the same number that Moses led out of Egypt to the Promised Land.

The land making up Israel is 10,840 sq miles. That includes Judea and Samaria.  Without it the land is only 8,000 square miles.  It's slightly smaller than New Jersey .  Only 17% of the land is arable.  It's 260 long, 60 miles at the widest, and 3 to 9 miles at the narrowest.  This is a very small piece of real estate.   California has 160,222 sq miles. 

As for the Palestinians, 200,000 to 570,000 Arabs needlessly left their homes when their Arab co-horts attacked Israel in 1948 so as not to be in the way of the victorious Arab armies in their planned massacre of the Jewish defenders.  Their leaders told them to leave.  When they did not win, these same people were told to remain in refugee camps.  Some had only been in the area for 2 years or less.  If they had been here for 2 years, they were deemed "refugees" by the British who were keeping the records.  Needless to say, these same British were  quite anti-Jewish.  The Arabs had come to the Jewish sites looking for work.   160,000 Arabs had not fled, and they have become the Arab citizens.  200,000 had left. 

From 1949 to 1950 , 700,000 Jews living in Arab countries such as Yemen were driven from their homes and fled to Israel.  Israel assisted them in getting there and this was called "Operation Magic Carpet".  Israel immediately found room for them and got them settled and helped. 

What used to be a center for learning has become a political time bomb.  I'm talking about universities, where  academic freedom is now a one-way street.  Only those with "correct opinions" may be heard.  Protests against Israel qualifies as "academic "speech," but not for those defending Israel.  Students are learning that America is the big Satan and Israel the little Satan. 

Palestinians and their sympathizers are violating the same free speech rights they demand.  Examples are Israeli generals and politicians who have been threatened in Europe that they will be sued for crimes against humanity; IDF veterans (practically every male and female Israeli) disinvited from academic panels, and now pro-Israel professors that are accused on "intimidating" pro-Palestinian student groups.  Suddently, truth is intimidating. 

This has happened just recently at U of California at San Diego on 29th February 2012.  Divestment from Israel was finally  defeated, something the Palestinians were pushing.    They wanted to divest from GE and Northop Gruman for supplying parts of Apache Helicopters sold to Israel.  Israel was violating Palestinian human rights and thus expanding the occupation, they told people.  Never mind that it was they who were attacking Israel with missiles, mortars and rockets and that the helicopters were thus saving Jewish lives as a defense against slaughter!  A majority group were actively silencing pro-Israel professors with intimidation and legal threats.  It's a new low to happen on American campuses.  Efforts to exercise free speech and push back are being criminalized as "intimidation." 

Since Israel's inception, Israel has had to be defensive to exist.  It is constantly being attacked.  Israel has never started a war.  Israel has always wanted peace, while its neighbors want not only a piece of Israel's land but the whole state.  So far, little David's (Israel) slingshot finds its mark in defense while Goliath (Palestinians) isn't smart enough to live and let live without being the bully. 

Resource: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4203449,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Jews

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