sexta-feira, 26 de novembro de 2010

Entrevista de Geert Wilders ao jornal israelense Yedioth

"Para dizer a verdade, sim, eu temo por minha vida".

"Eu sou apenas um homem. O perigo não vem apenas da Holanda. Ele vem de fora também. Há ameaças muito graves a partir de vários grupos terroristas, e quando alguém está ciente do grau de perigo, é apenas humano a pensar que algo ruim vai acontecer. Mas eu não posso permitir que esses pensamentos afetem meu trabalho. Se eu moderar a minha voz por causa das ameaças, parar de dizer o que está na minha mente, ou deixar de ser um político, aquelas pessoas terão utilizado meios anti-democráticos, ameaças e assassinatos para silenciar outros. Eles vão ganhar. Não os deixarei ganhar".

"É triste que, enquanto luto pela liberdade do meu país, eu perdi a minha própria", disse Wilders em entrevista especial para o jornal Yedioth.

"Eu só tenho a liberdade de expressão e pensamento. Ameaças à minha vida provam que meus argumentos são justos. Eu tenho certeza que se eu falasse com críticas sobre o Cristianismo ou o Judaísmo, não haveria resposta tão radical. Não haveria manifestações no Vaticano. A bandeira holandesa não seria queimada. Um milhão e meio de pessoas que votaram em nós, nas últimas eleições, não me veriam como um fascista ou um racista".

"Israel é o farol e a única democracia nesta parte retrógrada e ditatorial do mundo", ele proclama. "Israel é muito próximo de nós, à nossa identidade europeia. Israel luta a nossa guerra".

Poucos dias atrás, um tribunal holandês decidiu não punir um rapper muçulmano que escreveu em uma de suas músicas que iria atacar Geert Wilders. Em uma de suas músicas, ele dizia: "Geert, isto não é uma brincadeira. Na última noite, eu tive um sonho de arrancar a sua cabeça". Em outra parte, a música diz que "qualquer um que falar de muçulmanos será morto".

Há seis anos atrás, quando o governo holandês já não tinha casas seguras, Geert e sua esposa ficaram na prisão.

"As celas em que nós vivíamos tinha sido anteriormente ocupada por dois agentes líbios, responsáveis por abater o avião "Pan Am". Nós não estávamos lá como prisioneiros, mas como pessoas protegidas. Nós também dormimos em bases militares ao redor da Holanda e aviões militares nos levaram, se necessário fosse, para as nossas reuniões. Foi uma loucura. Houve momentos em que eu tive que colocar uma peruca, um bigode falso, e um par de óculos escuros para evitar que outros me reconhecessem".

Extrema-direita? Fascista? Racista?

"Eu sou o oposto direto de tudo isso", protesta Wilders. "Nós usamos somente os meios democráticos. Nós definitivamente não somos racistas; nós não nos importamos com a cor da pele das pessoas. É ridículo afirmar que todos os nossos eleitores são fascistas. É um insulto - não apenas para mim, mas para eles também. Não pode haver tantas pessoas insanas na Holanda. Mas a elite política, que não conseguiu resolver os problemas que falamos abertamente - a imigração em massa, os índices de criminalidade, o islamismo - ainda pensa que não é politicamente correto falar sobre isso. Eles nos vêem recebendo amplo apoio e nos demonizam como resposta".

Wilders diz que os partidos estabelecidos em toda a Europa não têm nenhuma ideia de como tratar partidos como o dele.

"Eles tentam colocar todos os tipos de rótulos em nós e, em seguida, copiam o que fazemos. Algumas semanas atrás eu fiz um discurso em Berlim. Eu disse aos alemães "Por favor, esqueçam seu passado. As novas gerações não são responsáveis pelo que aconteceu. Livrem-se do seu passado, porque ele impede que você fale livremente sobre os problemas criados pela imigração em massa e Islão.


Em sua entrevista, Wilders reitera que o Islão não é uma religião

"É uma ideologia totalitária. Nela, não há lugar para nada, a não ser o próprio Islão. Ela quer controlar não apenas a vida privada das pessoas, mas a vida da sociedade também. Se você é um ateu, um cristão ou um judeu vivendo em uma sociedade onde o islamismo é dominante, sua vida é muito difícil. É por isso que comparações devem ser feitas entre o Islã e outras ideologias totalitárias como o comunismo eo fascismo.

"Eu não tenho nada contra os muçulmanos como seres humanos. A maioria deles são pessoas que respeitam a lei como eu e você. Mas sou contra a imigração em massa de países muçulmanos, porque os imigrantes trazem sua cultura para cá, que, se permitida ser dominante, vai mudar a nossa sociedade. Já em países com uma considerável minoria muçulmana, essas mudanças para o pior pode ser vistas".

Wilders também admite a sua grande admiração a Israel e a Ariel Sharon: "Sharon foi demonizado no Ocidente, também, mas ele foi um grande político, e eu o tenho como um exemplo".

"Acredito que o conflito entre Israel e os palestinos não é territorial. Quem afirmar o contrário não tem idéia do que está falando. Se você der a Cisjordânia e Jerusalém Oriental e deixar os palestinos tê-los, isso não acabaria com o conflito. Vai levar algum tempo - um mês, um ano, dez anos - mas eles exigirão o resto do seu país, porque é um conflito ideológico. A solução, portanto, não poderia ser territorial, mas tem que ser ideológica.

"Palestinos acreditam - e esta é a natureza do Islão - que Israel é deles, e através da luta contra Israel eles combatem o ocidente não-muçulmano. A luta contra Israel é a luta contra nós. Nós somos Israel. A razão para o bom sono dos pais holandeses com nenhuma preocupação com os seus filhos é que os pais em Israel passam noites sem dormir porque seus filhos estão no Exército. Isso não significa que Israel não possa ser criticado, mas eu não tenho vergonha de lutar por Israel".

Na conferência, Wilders tentará convencer o público que os palestinos já têm o seu próprio país. "A Jordânia é a Palestina", afirma. "Isso foi verdade no passado, após o acordo Sykes-Picot, e, portanto, é uma solução para o conflito. Mesmo os reis da Jordânia, Abdullah e Hussein, disseram isso no passado. Só depois, quando eles perceberam que essas declarações poderiam pôr em perigo o seu reinado, porque os palestinos são maioria na Jordânia, eles mudaram suas mentes. Eu sou contra a idéia de transferência ou de limpeza étnica, mas se a Jordânia se tornasse a Palestina, seria possível encorajar os palestinos a se mudarem para lá. É claro que não será uma pessoa que decidirá como acabar com este conflito. Israel é uma democracia e decidirá por si próprio qual é a melhor solução para ele. A decisão é sua".




Entrevista completa no blog de Geert Wilders.


Tradução e edição: Júlio Lins, do blog Mente Conservadora.


sábado, 6 de novembro de 2010

What Occupation?

Few subjects have been falsified so thoroughly as the recent history of the West Bank and Gaza. The history of Israel's so-called "occupation" of Palestinian lands and the ways in which Palestinians and Arabs have distorted Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza are discussed.



by Efraim Karsh

NO TERM has dominated the discourse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more than "occupation." For decades now, hardly a day has passed without some mention in the international media of Israel's supposedly illegitimate presence on Palestinian lands. This presence is invoked to explain the origins and persistence of the conflict between the parties, to show Israel's allegedly brutal and repressive nature, and to justify the worst anti-Israel terrorist atrocities. The occupation, in short, has become a catchphrase, and like many catchphrases it means different things to different people.

For most Western observers, the term "occupation" describes Israel's control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, areas that it conquered during the Six-Day war of June 1967. But for many Palestinians and Arabs, the Israeli presence in these territories represents only the latest chapter in an uninterrupted story of "occupations" dating back to the very creation of Israel on "stolen" land. If you go looking for a book about Israel in the foremost Arab bookstore on London's Charing Cross Road, you will find it in the section labeled "Occupied Palestine." That this is the prevailing view not only among Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza but among Palestinians living within Israel itself as well as elsewhere around the world is shown by the routine insistence on a Palestinian "right of return" that is meant to reverse the effects of the "1948 occupation"-i.e., the establishment of the state of Israel itself.

Palestinian intellectuals routinely blur any distinction between Israel's actions before and after 1967. Writing recently in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the prominent Palestinian cultural figure Jacques Persiqian told his Jewish readers that today's terrorist attacks were "what you have brought upon yourselves after 54 years of systematic oppression of another people"-a historical accounting that, going back to 1948, calls into question not Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza but its very legitimacy as a state.

Hanan Ashrawi, the most articulate exponent of the Palestinian cause, has been even more forthright in erasing the line between post-1967 and pre-1967 "occupations." "I come to you today with a heavy heart," she told the now-infamous World Conference Against Racism in Durban last summer, "leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing naqba [catastrophe]":

In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical injustice manifested in a dual victimization: on the one hand, the injustice of dispossession, dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the population .... On the other hand, those who remained were subjected to the systematic oppression and brutality of an inhuman occupation that robbed them of all their rights and liberties.

This original "occupation"-that is, again, the creation and existence of the state of Israel-was later extended, in Ashrawi's narrative, as a result of the Six-Day war:

Those of us who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 have languished in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under a unique combination of military occupation, settler colonization, and systematic oppression. Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution.

Taken together, the charges against Israel's various "occupations" represent-and are plainly intended to be-a damning indictment of the entire Zionist enterprise. In almost every particular, they are also grossly false.

IN 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded or destroyed to make way for the establishment of Israel. From biblical times, when this territory was the state of the Jews, to its occupation by the British army at the end of World War I, Palestine had never existed as a distinct political entity but was rather part of one empire after another, from the Romans, to the Arabs, to the Ottomans. When the British arrived in 1917, the immediate loyalties of the area's inhabitants were parochial-to clan, tribe, village, town, or religious sect-and coexisted with their fealty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community.

Under a League of Nations mandate explicitly meant to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish national home, the British established the notion of an independent Palestine for the first time and delineated its boundaries. In 1947, confronted with a determined Jewish struggle for independence, Britain returned the mandate to the League's successor, the United Nations, which in turn decided on November 29, 1947, to partition mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, the other Arab.

The state of Israel was thus created by an internationally recognized act of national self-determination-an act, moreover, undertaken by an ancient people in its own homeland. In accordance with common democratic practice, the Arab population in the new state's midst was immediately recognized as a legitimate ethnic and religious minority. As for the prospective Arab state, its designated territory was slated to include, among other areas, the two regions under contest today-namely, Gaza and the West Bank (with the exception of Jerusalem, which was to be placed under international control).

As is well known, the implementation of the UN's partition plan was aborted by the effort of the Palestinians and of the surrounding Arab states to destroy the Jewish state at birth. What is less well known is that even if the Jews had lost the war, their territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians. Rather, it would have been divided among the invading Arab forces, for the simple reason that none of the region's Arab regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct nation. As the eminent Arab-American historian Philip Hitti described the common Arab view to an Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not."

This fact was keenly recognized by the British authorities on the eve of their departure. As one official observed in mid-December 1947, "it does not appear that Arab Palestine will be an entity, but rather that the Arab countries will each claim a portion in return for their assistance [in the war against Israel], unless [Transjordan's] King Abdallah takes rapid and firm action as soon as the British withdrawal is completed." A couple of months later, the British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, informed the colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, that "the most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and Hebron to Abdallah, and the south to Egypt."

THE BRITISH proved to be prescient. Neither Egypt nor Jordan ever allowed Palestinian self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank-- which were, respectively, the parts of Palestine conquered by them during the 1948-49 war. Indeed, even UN Security Council Resolution 242, which after the Six-Day war of 1967 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, did not envisage the creation of a Palestinian state. To the contrary: since the Palestinians were still not viewed as a distinct nation, it was assumed that any territories evacuated by Israel, would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers-Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The resolution did not even mention the Palestinians by name, affirming instead the necessity "for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem"-a clause that applied not just to the Palestinians but to the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from the Arab states following the 1948 war.

At this time-we are speaking of the late 1960's-- Palestinian nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the Western democracies, the Soviet Union (the foremost supporter of radical Arabism), and the Arab world itself. "Moderate" Arab rulers like the Hashemites in Jordan viewed an independent Palestinian state as a mortal threat to their own kingdom, while the Saudis saw it as a potential source of extremism and instability. Pan-Arab nationalists were no less adamantly opposed, having their own purposes in mind for the region. As late as 1974, Syrian President Hafez alAssad openly referred to Palestine as "not only a part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria"; there is no reason to think he had changed his mind by the time of his death in 2000.

Nor, for that matter, did the populace of the West Bank and Gaza regard itself as a distinct nation. The collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society following the 1948 defeat had shattered an always fragile communal fabric, and the subsequent physical separation of the various parts of the Palestinian diaspora prevented the crystallization of a national identity. Host Arab regimes actively colluded in discouraging any such sense from arising. Upon occupying the West Bank during the 1948 war, King Abdallah had moved quickly to erase all traces of corporate Palestinian identity. On April 4, 1950, the territory was formally annexed to Jordan, its residents became Jordanian citizens, and they were increasingly integrated into the kingdom's economic, political, and social structures.

For its part, the Egyptian government showed no desire to annex the Gaza Strip but had instead ruled the newly acquired area as an occupied military zone. This did not imply support of Palestinian nationalism, however, or of any sort of collective political awareness among the Palestinians. The local population was kept under tight control, was denied Egyptian citizenship, and was subjected to severe restrictions on travel.

WHAT, THEN, of the period after 1967, when these territories passed into the hands of Israel? Is it the case that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been the victims of the most "varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution" ever devised by the human mind?

At the very least, such a characterization would require a rather drastic downgrading of certain other well-documented 20th-century phenomena, from the slaughter of Armenians during World War I and onward through a grisly chronicle of tens upon tens of millions murdered, driven out, crushed under the heels of despots. By stark contrast, during the three decades of Israel's control, far fewer Palestinians were killed at Jewish hands than by King Hussein of Jordan in the single month of September 1970 when, fighting off an attempt by Yasir Arafat's PLO to destroy his monarchy, he dispatched (according to the Palestinian scholar Yezid Sayigh) between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians, among them anywhere from 1,500 to 3,500 civilians. Similarly, the number of innocent Palestinians killed by their Kuwaiti hosts in the winter of 1991, in revenge for the PLO's support for Saddam Hussein's brutal occupation of Kuwait, far exceeds the number of Palestinian rioters and terrorists who lost their lives in the first intifada against Israel during the late 1980's.

Such crude comparisons aside, to present the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as "systematic oppression" is itself the inverse of the truth. It should be recalled, first of all, that this occupation did not come about as a consequence of some grand expansionist design, but rather was incidental to Israel's success against a pan-Arab attempt to destroy it. Upon the outbreak of IsraeliEgyptian hostilities on June 5, 1967, the Israeli government secretly pleaded with King Hussein of Jordan, the de-facto ruler of the West Bank, to forgo any military action; the plea was rebuffed by the Jordanian monarch, who was loathe to lose the anticipated spoils of what was to be the Arabs' "final round" with Israel.

Thus it happened that, at the end of the conflict, Israel unexpectedly found itself in control of some one million Palestinians, with no definite idea about their future status and lacking any concrete policy for their administration. In the wake of the war, the only objective adopted by then-Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan was to preserve normalcy in the territories through a mixture of economic inducements and a minimum of Israeli intervention. The idea was that the local populace would be given the freedom to administer itself as it wished, and would be able to maintain regular contact with the Arab world via the Jordan River bridges. In sharp contrast with, for example, the U.S. occupation of postwar Japan, which saw a general censorship of all Japanese media and a comprehensive revision of school curricula, Israel made no attempt to reshape Palestinian culture. It limited its oversight of the Arabic press in the territories to military and security matters, and allowed the continued use in local schools of Jordanian textbooks filled with vile anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda.

Israel's restraint in this sphere-which turned out to be desperately misguided-is only part of the story. The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the betteroff Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

ALL THIS, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres. Indeed, even as the PLO (until 1982 headquartered in Lebanon and thereafter in Tunisia) proclaimed its ongoing commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state, the Israelis did surprisingly little to limit its political influence in the territories. The publication of proPLO editorials was permitted in the local press, and anti-Israel activities by PLO supporters were tolerated so long as they did not involve overt incitements to violence. Israel also allowed the free flow of PLO-controlled funds, a policy justified by Minister of Defense Ezer Weizmann in 1978 in these (deluded) words: "It does not matter that they get money from the PLO, as long as they don't build arms factories with it." Nor, with very few exceptions, did Israel encourage the formation of Palestinian political institutions that might serve as a counterweight to the PLO. As a result, the PLO gradually established itself as the predominant force in the territories, relegating the pragmatic traditional leadership to the fringes of the political system.*

Given the extreme and even self-destructive leniency of Israel's administrative policies, what seems remarkable is that it took as long as it did for the PLO to entice the residents of the West Bank and Gaza into a popular struggle against the Jewish state. Here Israel's counterinsurgency measures must be given their due, as well as the low level of national consciousness among the Palestinians and the sheer rapidity and scope of the improvements in their standard of living. The fact remains, however, that during the two-and-a-half decades from the occupation of the territories to the onset of the Oslo peace process in 1993, there was very little "armed resistance," and most terrorist attacks emanated from outside-from Jordan in the late 1960's, then from Lebanon.

In an effort to cover up this embarrassing circumstance, Fatah, the PLO's largest constituent organization, adopted the slogan that "there is no difference between inside and outside." But there was a difference, and a rather fundamental one. By and large, the residents of the territories wished to get on with their lives and take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Israeli rule. Had the West Bank eventually been returned to Jordan, its residents, all of whom had been Jordanian citizens before 1967, might well have reverted to that status. Alternatively, had Israel prevented the spread of the PLO's influence in the territories, a local leadership, better attuned to the real interests and desires of the people and more amenable to peaceful coexistence with Israel, might have emerged.

But these things were not to be. By the mid1970's, the PLO had made itself into the "sole representative of the Palestinian people," and in short order Jordan and Egypt washed their hands of the West Bank and Gaza. Whatever the desires of the people living in the territories, the PLO had vowed from the moment of its founding in the mid1960's-well before the Six-Day war-to pursue its "revolution until victory," that is, until the destruction of the Jewish state. Once its position was secure, it proceeded to do precisely that.

BY THE mid-1990's, thanks to Oslo, the PLO had achieved a firm foothold in the West Bank and Gaza. Its announced purpose was to lay the groundwork for Palestinian statehood but its real purpose was to do what it knew best-namely, create an extensive terrorist infrastructure and use it against its Israeli "peace partner." At first it did this tacitly, giving a green light to other terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad; then it operated openly and directly.

But what did all this have to do with Israel's "occupation"? The declaration signed on the White House lawn in 1993 by the PLO and the Israeli government provided for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed five years, during which Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent peace settlement. During this interim period the territories would be administered by a Palestinian Council, to be freely and democratically elected after the withdrawal of Israeli military forces both from the Gaza Strip and from the populated areas of the West Bank.

By May 1994, Israel had completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (apart from a small stretch of territory containing Israeli settlements) and the Jericho area of the West Bank. On July 1, Yasir Arafat made his triumphant entry into Gaza. On September 28, 1995, despite Arafat's abysmal failure to clamp down on terrorist activities in the territories now under his control, the two parties signed an interim agreement, and by the end of the year Israeli forces had been withdrawn from the West Bank's populated areas with the exception of Hebron (where redeployment was completed in early 1997). On January 20, 1996, elections to the Palestinian Council were held, and shortly afterward both the Israeli civil administration and military government were dissolved.

The geographical scope of these Israeli withdrawals was relatively limited; the surrendered land amounted to some 30 percent of the West Bank's overall territory. But its impact on the Palestinian population was nothing short of revolutionary. At one fell swoop, Israel relinquished control over virtually all of the West Bank's 1.4 million residents. Since that time, nearly 60 percent of them-in the Jericho area and in the seven main cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Hebron-have lived entirely under Palestinian jurisdiction. Another 40 percent live in towns, villages, refugee camps, and hamlets where the Palestinian Authority exercises civil authority but, in line with the Oslo accords, Israel has maintained "overriding responsibility for security." Some two percent of the West Bank's population-tens of thousands of Palestinians-continue to live in areas where Israel has complete control, but even there the Palestinian Authority maintains "functional jurisdiction."

In short, since the beginning of 1996, and certainly following the completion of the redeployment from Hebron in January 1997, 99 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have not lived under Israeli occupation. By no conceivable stretching of words can the anti-Israel violence emanating from the territories during these years be made to qualify as resistance to foreign occupation. In these years there has been no such occupation.

IF THE stubborn persistence of Palestinian terrorism is not attributable to the continuing occupation, many of the worst outrages against Israeli civilians likewise occurred-contrary to the mantra of Palestinian spokesmen and their apologists-not at moments of breakdown in the Oslo "peace process" but at its high points, when the prospect of Israeli withdrawal appeared brightest and most imminent.

Suicide bombings, for example, were introduced in the atmosphere of euphoria only a few months after the historic Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn: eight people were murdered in April 1994 while riding a bus in the town of Afula. Six months later, 21 Israelis were murdered on a bus in Tel Aviv. In the following year, five bombings took the lives of a further 38 Israelis. During the short-lived government of the dovish Shimon Peres (November 1995-May 1996), after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, 58 Israelis were murdered within the span of one week in three suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Further disproving the standard view is the fact that terrorism was largely curtailed following Benjamin Netanyahu's election in May 1996 and the consequent slowdown in the Oslo process. During Netanyahu's three years in power, some 50 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks-a third of the casualty rate during the Rabin government and a sixth of the casualty rate during Peres's term.

There was a material side to this downturn in terrorism as well. Between 1994 and 1996, the Rabin and Peres governments had imposed repeated closures on the territories in order to stem the tidal wave of terrorism in the wake of the Oslo accords. This had led to a steep drop in the Palestinian economy. With workers unable to get into Israel, unemployment rose sharply, reaching as high as 50 percent in Gaza. The movement of goods between Israel and the territories, as well as between the West Bank and Gaza, was seriously disrupted, slowing exports and discouraging potential private investment.

The economic situation in the territories began to improve during the term of the Netanyahu government, as the steep fall in terrorist attacks led to a corresponding decrease in closures. Real GNP per capita grew by 3.5 percent in 1997, 7.7 percent in 1998, and 3.5 percent in 1999, while unemployment was more than halved. By the beginning of 1999, according to the World Bank, the West Bank and Gaza had fully recovered from the economic decline of the previous years.

Then, in still another turnabout, came Ehud Barak, who in the course of a dizzying six months in late 2000 and early 2001 offered Yasir Arafat a complete end to the Israeli presence, ceding virtually the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state together with some Israeli territory, and making breathtaking concessions over Israel's capital city of Jerusalem. To this, however, Arafat's response was war. Since its launch, the Palestinian campaign has inflicted thousands of brutal attacks on Israeli civilians-suicide bombings, drive-by shootings, stabbings, lynching, stonings-murdering more than 500 and wounding some 4,000.

In the entire two decades of Israeli occupation preceding the Oslo accords, some 400 Israelis were murdered; since the conclusion of that "peace" agreement, twice as many have lost their lives in terrorist attacks. If the occupation was the cause of terrorism, why was terrorism sparse during the years of actual occupation, why did it increase dramatically with the prospect of the end of the occupation, and why did it escalate into open war upon Israel's most far-reaching concessions ever? To the contrary, one might argue with far greater plausibility that the absence of occupation-that is, the withdrawal of close Israeli surveillance-is precisely what facilitated the launching of the terrorist war in the first place.

There are limits to Israel's ability to transform a virulent enemy into a peace partner, and those limits have long since been reached. To borrow from Baruch Spinoza, peace is not the absence of war but rather a state of mind: a disposition to benevolence, confidence, and justice. From the birth of the Zionist movement until today, that disposition has remained conspicuously absent from the mind of the Palestinian leadership.

It is not the 1967 occupation that led to the Palestinians' rejection of peaceful coexistence and their pursuit of violence. Palestinian terrorism started well before 1967, and continued-and intensified-after the occupation ended in all but name. Rather, what is at fault is the perduring Arab view that the creation of the Jewish state was itself an original act of "inhuman occupation" with which compromise of any final kind is beyond the realm of the possible. Until that disposition changes, which is to say until a different leadership arises, the idea of peace in the context of the Arab Middle East will continue to mean little more than the continuation of war by other means.

Edward Said / Orientalism

EDWARD SAID (1935-2003)




The leukemia that a couple of days ago killed Edward Said lasted long enough for the polemist and political activist who had settled in the US to watch his projects and hopes crumble.



Said owes his fame to having become the most articulate apologist for the "palestinian cause", something that wasn’t all that difficult when one considers that most of his rivals in this field, whenever they’re not too busy blowing up school buses and pizza parlours, satisfy themselves spreading anti-Semitic forgeries like "The Protocols of the Sages of Zion". Even so, although his prose reminds one of a post-modern English version of a deconstructionist French translation of the Germanic ravings of some Heidegger epigone, his academic dance of the seven veils with successive layers of Marxist, anti-imperialist and post-colonial jargon never hid the fact that his goals were fundamentally the same.



A large part of his so-called moral authority came from Said presenting himself as a refugee from a Palestinian homeland. In spite of having been put in doubt by his adversaries, the truth or falsity of this claim isn’t too important. The internal borders of the Arab world are all artificial and, half a century ago, loyalties there were established in relation do clans, families, cities or villages and religious sects, not countries or nations, an European import that has had no time to grow deep roots in the Middle East. The Palestinian nationality as a distinct identity has not begun to be developed before the 60s.



Born in an upper middle class Christian family, a student at the best local schools and a member of the most exclusive clubs, Said became since the 50s an American and he benefited both from this condition and from the romanticized image of an exile to reach the top of the academic pecking order. Since the beginning of the anti-Vietnam movements in the following decade, any cause that could be related to the Third World became first popular and then compulsory among Western intellectuals. Attuned to such a context, Said, whose speciality were Literary Studies, published in 1978 the book that would make him famous, assuring his role of guru almost until his death: “Orientalism”.



His "classic" is a confused, misinformed and angry diatribe that consists in applying to a particular case an overused generic thesis according to which intellectuals are mostly the servants of the ruling class. What “Orientalism” tries to show through half-truths, non-sequiturs, weird examples and exceptions turned into rules is that the discipline or, rather, the disciplines generically called Orientalism that study the Eastern peoples and cultures are nothing but the theoretical arm of imperialism. In short, whoever studied difficult languages such as Chinese or Sanskrit, whoever translated or annotated old or forgotten Japanese or Persian works, whoever unearthed lost temples and palaces did it only for the profit of British or French capitalists.



If such a childish reductionism weren’t enough, the author limited his analysis to the less Oriental of all the non-European regions: the Arab-Muslim world. Surrounding the publication of his work with a whole series of polemics where, to any substantive objection, he only answered questioning the ideological credentials of his critics, he managed, helped by the spirit of the times, to turn his book in the cornerstone of an academic fashion that is still strong enough, that is, judging people and works according not to scholarly criteria but in the light of their political choices. His greatest success was to have coined the very expression "Orientalism", making it work, like similar terms (fascist, racist, communist), as an insult that, shutting up those with a different point of view, allows its users to avoid any discussion.



One year later, in 1979, he published his other "classic", « The Question of Palestine », a book the purpose of which was to narrate the tragedy of his people but which touches historical truth only tangentially, at best. Among the many lies with which this deformed view of the past is built, the most scandalous is the mysterious disappearance of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hadjj Amin al Huseini (1893-1974). The main leader of what Said calls Palestine and of its revolt, in 1936-39, against British rule, the ally of the Nazis who wanted Hitler to help him exterminate the Jews of Haifa and Tel Aviv, the personality that dominated, between the 20s and the 60s, the life of the local Arabs, taking them from catastrophe to catastrophe, makes only one very brief appearance in the whole volume. It is as if a history of the US or Italy, covering the same period, simply omitted the names of FDR or Mussollini.



For two long decades, until the day when the Al Qaeda atrocities, demoralizing his apologetic view of the Islamic world, occasioned his final eclipse by his nemesis, Bernard Lewis, Said kept a powerful and evil hold over many intellectuals. And, though below such euphemisms as the “creation of a secular bi-national state where Jews and Arabs would live democratically together” what really lurked was his mad dream of abolishing Israel, something that would result in the extermination of its “non native” population, the real victims of his ideas were first and foremost his own countrymen whom he helped to guide towards new disasters.

___________________________________________________________________

Folha de S. Paulo, 29 de setembro de 2003
NELSON ASCHER



Edward Said (1935-2003)



A leucemia que, há poucos dias, matou Edward Said prolongou-se o bastante para que o polemista e ativista político radicado nos Estados Unidos pudesse assistir à falência de seus projetos e expectativas.



Said deve sua reputação a ter se tornado o mais articulado defensor da "causa palestina", algo que nada tinha de difícil se considerarmos que seus competidores nessa área, quando não estão ocupados explodindo ônibus escolares ou pizzarias, satisfazem-se divulgando falsificações anti-semitas como "Os Protocolos dos Sábios de Sião". Ainda assim, se bem que sua prosa evoque uma versão pós-moderna para o inglês de uma tradução desconstrucionista francesa dos delírios germânicos de algum epígono de Martin Heidegger, sua dança acadêmica dos sete véus, sobrepondo camadas de jargão marxista, antiimperialista e pós-colonial, jamais ocultou que seus objetivos eram idênticos.



Boa parte de sua, digamos, autoridade moral resultava de ele se apresentar como um refugiado da terra natal palestina. Não obstante ter sido posta em dúvida por adversários, a veracidade ou não dessa reivindicação é uma questão secundária. As fronteiras internas do mundo árabe são artificiais e, meio século atrás, as lealdades se estabeleciam em relação a clãs, famílias, cidades ou aldeias e seitas religiosas, não a países ou nações, uma importação européia que nem sequer teve tempo de se aclimatar ao Oriente Médio. A nacionalidade palestina, como identidade distinta, começou a ser elaborada somente nos anos 60.



Nascido numa família da alta classe média cristã, educado nas melhores escolas, frequentador dos clubes mais exclusivos, Said tornou-se, desde os anos 50, um norte-americano e beneficiou-se tanto dessa condição como da imagem romantizada de exilado para atingir o ápice do mandarinato universitário. A partir dos movimentos de contestação à Guerra do Vietnã na década seguinte, a defesa de qualquer causa remotamente vinculada ao Terceiro Mundo tornou-se primeiro popular e logo compulsória entre os intelectuais do Ocidente. Sensível a tal contexto, Said, que se especializara em estudos literários, publicou em 1978 o livro que o projetaria, garantindo-lhe, quase até o final da vida, o papel de guru: "Orientalismo".



Seu "clássico" é uma diatribe confusa, desinformada e raivosa que se resume na aplicação a um caso particular da batida tese genérica de acordo com a qual intelectuais são, em sua maioria, lacaios da classe dominante. O que "Orientalismo" tenta expor com meias verdades, com um "non sequitur" após o outro, com exemplos abstrusos e exceções convertidas em regras, é que o orientalismo, a disciplina, ou melhor, o conjunto de disciplinas dedicadas ao estudo dos povos e culturas ao leste da Europa não passa do braço teórico da prática imperial. Trocando em miúdos, quem quer que tenha se aprofundado no estudo de línguas difíceis, como o chinês ou o sânscrito, traduzido e anotado obras antigas ou esquecidas da Pérsia ou do Japão, localizado e restaurado as ruínas de templos e palácios soterrados fez o que fez para que capitalistas londrinos ou parisienses extraíssem confortavelmente a mais-valia gerada por povos distantes.



Não bastasse seu reducionismo pueril, o autor circunscreveu sua análise à menos oriental das regiões extra-européias: o mundo árabe-islâmico. Envolvendo a publicação de sua obra numa sucessão de polêmicas em que às objeções substantivas retorquia questionando as credenciais ideológicas de seus críticos, ele conseguiu, auxiliado pelo espírito da época, transformá-la na pedra angular da moda acadêmica que vigora até hoje: a de julgar pessoas e trabalhos não por seus méritos científicos, mas por suas opções políticas. Seu grande sucesso reside em ter, com a expressão "orientalismo" , cunhado um insulto que, como "fascista", "racista" ou "comunista", possibilita ao usuário esquivar-se do debate desqualificando os interlocutores.



Um ano depois, em 1979, sairia seu outro "clássico", "A Questão da Palestina", um livro que pretende narrar a tragédia de seu povo, mas cujos contatos com a verdade histórica são, na melhor das hipóteses, tangenciais. Em meio às incontáveis mistificações sobre as quais se constrói essa versão deformada do passado, a mais escandalosa é o misterioso desaparecimento do Grão Mufti de Jerusalém, Hadj Amin Al Husseini (1893-1974). O principal líder político daquilo que Said chama de Palestina, o desencadeador e dirigente da revolta antibritânica de 1936-39, o aliado dos nazistas que tentou convencer Adolf Hitler a exterminar os judeus de Tel Aviv e Haifa, a personalidade que dominou a vida dos árabes da região entre os anos 20 e 60, conduzindo-os de catástrofe em catástrofe, aparece uma única vez, de passagem, no livro inteiro. Isso equivale a escrever sobre os EUA ou a Itália dos mesmos anos omitindo respectivamente os nomes de Roosevelt e Mussolini.



Durante duas boas décadas, até que os atentados bin-ladenistas, desmoralizando sua apresentação apologética do mundo islâmico, levassem seu arqui-rival, o arabista octogenário Bernard Lewis, a eclipsá-lo, Said exerceu uma influência intelectual tão avassaladora quanto perniciosa. E, embora sob eufemismos, como o da criação de um país binacional onde judeus e árabes convivessem democraticamente, ele continuasse acalentando o sonho maníaco de abolir Israel, exterminando-lhe os habitantes "não-nativos", as verdadeiras vítimas de suas idéias foram antes seus conterrâneos, que ele ajudou a conduzir rumo a novos desastres.


The Truth and Edward Said / A verdade e Edward Said

Said jogando pedras em israelenses


Edward Said, the world's most renowned Palestinian intellectual, was exposed as a fraud last summer. The experience apparently taught him nothing.

For decades Said had passed himself off as an exile -- an Arab born and raised in Jerusalem only to be driven out by the Jews in the runup to the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. He had told the story often, lacing his narrative with poignant detail.

"I feel even more depressed," he reminisced in March 1998, "when I remember my beautiful old house surrounded by pine and orange trees in Al-Talbiyeh in east Jerusalem." In a BBC documentary he recalled his years at St. George's, an Anglican prep school in Jerusalem; he and a boy named David Ezra, Said recollected, used to sit together in the back of the classroom. He told another interviewer in 1997 that he could still identify the rooms in his family's former house "where as a boy he read 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'Tarzan,' and where he and his mother read Shakespeare to each other." All this was lost when his family fled from Talbiyeh in December 1947, driven out, as he explained, by the "Jewish-forces sound truck [that] warned Arabs to leave the neighborhood."

But as Justus Reid Weiner showed in Commentary, the influential journal of opinion, Said's tragic tale was largely a fabrication. The Saids, it turned out, had lived in Egypt, not Palestine. Edward Said grew up and went to school in a posh neighborhood in Cairo, where his father had a thriving business. Now and then the family would visit cousins in Jerusalem; Edward was born during one such visit in 1935. But on his birth certificate, the Saids' place of residence was listed as Cairo; the space for indicating a local address in Palestine was left blank.

Weiner looked into the expulsion of Talbiyeh's Arabs in 1947. It never happened. He checked the student registries at St. George's. There was no mention of Edward Said. He even interviewed David Ezra, the student with whom Said sat in the back of the room.. Because of his bad eyesight, Ezra told Weiner, he had always sat up front.

Said occupies a lofty perch in the world of letters: He holds an endowed chair in English and literature at Columbia University, he is a highly sought-after lecturer, and he has served, at various times, as president of the Modern Language Association, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

But he is known above all as a zealous champion of the Palestinian cause. For many years he sat on the Palestine National Council, the PLO's "parliament in exile," and was a close advisor to Yasser Arafat. He has savaged Israel and pressed the Palestinians' case in every forum imaginable, from op-ed columns to radio broadcasts to congressional testimony. And his words were accorded great moral force, for wasn't Said himself a victim of Zionist usurpation? Hadn't he himself suffered displacement and exile?

When the world learned that he wasn't and he hadn't, his moral authority shriveled. It was as if, one observer put it, "we found out that Elie Wiesel spent the war in Geneva, not Auschwitz."

One might have thought that the embarrassment of it all would convince Said to stop lying about himself. And yet his fabrications continue.

During a visit to Lebanon in July, Said was seen hurling rocks over the border into Israel. Throwing stones at Israelis has been a popular pastime among Arab tourists in southern Lebanon ever since Israel withdrew in May. This stoning has drawn little international attention, even though several Israelis have been wounded, some permanently. But when Agence France Press released a photo of the world's most famous Palestinian intellectual joining in the violence, it made the papers everywhere. Said was sharply condemned, even in quarters where he is normally only praised. The Beirut Daily Star was appalled that a man "who has labored..... to dispel stereotypes about Arabs being 'violent'" would let himself "be swayed by a crowd into picking up a stone and lofting it across the international border." On Said's own campus, the Columbia Daily Spectator blasted his "hypocritical violent action" as "alien to this or any other institution of learning."

His response was to shrug off the incident as merely "a symbolic gesture of joy" -- and to lie. His rock, he said, had been "tossed into an empty place." Witnesses told a different story. London's Daily Telegraph reported that Said "stood less than 10 yards from Israeli soldiers in a two-story, blue-and-white watchtower from which flew five Israeli flags."

As for the damning AFP photograph, Said professed surprise: "I had no idea that media people were there, or that I was the object of attention." But AFP had a very different explanation -- as two Columbia professors, Awi Federgruen and Robert Pollack, found out when they contacted the press agency. What they learned, they wrote in the Spectator, was that "the photograph of [Said] throwing the rock was in fact delivered to this news agency by none other than Professor Said himself."

For a man who has written that intellectuals are bound "to speak the truth, as plainly, directly, and as honestly as possible," Said seems to have a hard time sticking to the facts about himself. Perhaps that is because he knows that there is no professional price to pay for his deceptions.

When Weiner exposed Said's elaborate falsehoods last year, Columbia responded by doing -- nothing. "Amazingly, Professor Said was not sanctioned or reprimanded by the [university's] president,'' writes Weiner in a new essay in Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars. "Nor has the dean, the board of trustees, or the university senate publicly addressed Said's dissimulation."

To anyone familiar with Columbia's history, this lack of interest in a professor's deceit is remarkable. For Said is not the first famous member of the English Department to be caught in a series of public lies. In the 1950s, a junior instructor named Charles Van Doren won national acclaim for his brilliant run on the NBC quiz show "Twenty-One" That acclaim turned to scorn when it emerged that the show was rigged, and Columbia made it clear at once that it would not keep a known liar on its faculty. "The issue is the moral one of honesty and integrity of teaching," said Dean John G. Palfrey, and "if these principles are to continue to have meaning at Columbia," Van Doren could not remain. The young teacher was contrite, but to no avail. He left Columbia and never taught again.

No such punishment -- indeed, no punishment at all -- was meted out to Said, even though his fraud was clearly worse. (As Weiner points out, "while Van Doren had to be coaxed by the producers of the program to compete dishonestly, Said initiated and carried out his deceit by himself.") Why the double standard?

When it comes to mere mortals, Columbia still insists on honesty. Just a few months ago a 19-year-old Columbia student who falsely told a professor that he had been in a car crash (in order to get more time on an assignment) was suspended for two years. Yet Said, whose concocted tale of exile and dispossession was far more elaborate and misled far more people, has faced no discipline whatsoever.

A professor who spreads untruths is like a doctor who administers poison or a judge who takes bribes. Each betrays his calling. Each is a menace to society. Doctors who kill can be stripped of their license; corrupt judges can be impeached. But a professor who deceives -- at Columbia, at any rate -- is free to go on deceiving. Is it any wonder that Edward Said is still telling lies?


_______________________________________________________________
A verdade sobre Edward Said
Por Jeff Jacoby

Edward Said, o mais renomado intelectual palestino, demonstrou não passar de uma grande fraude. A experiência, aparentemente, não lhe ensinou nada. Durante décadas Said passou por ser um exilado - um Árabe nascido e criado em Jerusalém, expulso por Israel na guerra Árabe-Israelense de 1948. Esta foi a história que ele sempre contou, permeando sua narrativa com detalhes cheios de emoção.

“Sinto-me cada vez mais deprimido” relembrava em Março de 1998 “quando eu lembro minha linda velha casa, cercada de pinheiros e laranjais em al-Talbiyeh, nas redondezas de Jerusalém”. Num documentário da BBC ele relembrou seus anos no Colégio St George, uma escola preparatória inglesa em Jerusalém. Ele e um rapaz de nome David Ezra costumavam sentar no fundo da sala de aula. Ele disse, em outra entrevista em 1997, que ele poderia identificar as peças de sua antiga casa familiar “onde, ainda garoto, ele lia Sherlock Holmes e Tarzan e onde ele e sua e sua mãe liam Shakespeare”. Tudo isto foi perdido quando sua família fugiu de Talbiyeh, em dezembro de 1947, expulsos “por carros de som israelenses [que] avisavam que os Árabes deveriam abandonar a vizinhança”.

Mas como Justus Reid Weiner mostrou em Commentary, um influente jornal, a trágica história de Said era, em grande parte, fabricada. Os Saids tinham morado no Egito, e não na Palestina. Edward Said cresceu e estudou num bairro elegante do Cairo, onde seu pai tinha um próspero negócio. Freqüentemente a família visitava parentes em Jerusalém. Edward nasceu numa destas visitas em 1935. Mas em sua certidão de nascimento a residência dos Saids foi registrada como sendo no Cairo. O espaço reservado para um endereço na Palestina ficou em branco.

Weiner investigou a expulsão dos Árabes de Talbiyeh em 1947 e nada foi encontrado. Ele checou também os registros de estudantes no Colégio St George e não havia nenhuma menção a Edward Said. Ele entrevistou David Ezra, o estudante que teria sentado nas últimas fileiras com Said.... Bem, por causa de suas dificuldade de ler Ezra sempre sentou nas primeiras filas.Said ocupava uma posição superior no mundo das letras: mantinha uma cadeira de Inglês e Literatura na Universidade de Colúmbia, era um professor muito procurado e foi, por diversas vezes, Presidente da Associação de Línguas Modernas, membro do Conselho de Relações Exteriores, e fellow da American Academy of Arts and Science.

Mas ele sempre foi reconhecido, principalmente, como um campeão da causa palestina. Por muitos anos foi membro do Conselho Nacional Palestino, o "Parlamento no Exílio" da OLP e conselheiro privado de Yasser Arafat. Ele atacava brutalmente Israel e defendia a causa palestina em todos os fóruns imagináveis, desde editoriais de jornal até transmissões para testemunhar perante o Congresso. E suas palavras tinham grande força moral - não era ele uma vítima da usurpação Sionista? Não tinha ele sofrido expulsão e exílio?

Quando o mundo percebeu que não, sua autoridade moral foi reduzida a nada. Era como se "soubéssemos que Elie Wiesel tivesse passado a guerra em Genebra e não em Auschwitz", como disse um observador. Poderíamos pensar que este constrangimento teria convencido Said a parar de mentir a seu próprio respeito. Mas suas mentiras continuaram.

Durante uma visita ao Líbano em julho, Said foi visto jogando pedras sobre a fronteira de Israel. Atirar pedras em Israel era um passatempo comum para turistas Árabes no sul do Líbano desde a retirada israelense em maio. O apedrejamento despertou pouco interesse internacional apesar de vários israelenses terem sido feridos, alguns séria e definitivamente. Mas quando a Agência France Press divulgou uma foto do mundialmente famoso intelectual palestino se juntando à violência, conseguiu manchete em todo o mundo. Said foi criticado, até mesmo em lugares onde era geralmente elogiado. O Beirut Daily Star demonstrou consternação de que "alguém que trabalhara tanto para acabar com os estereótipos contra os Árabes, se mostrasse violento...se permitisse levar pela turba a jogar pedras sobre a fronteira internacional". No próprio campus de Said o Columbia Daily Spectator atacou sua "ação violenta e hipócrita" como "estranha a esta ou a qualquer outra instituição de ensino".

Sua resposta foi desprezar o incidente como simplesmente "um gesto simbólico de contentamento" - e, mais uma vez, mentir. Suas pedras, disse ele tinham sido "jogadas num espaço vazio". Algumas testemunhas tinham outra versão. O London Telegraph publicou que Said "estava a menos de dez metros de soldados Israelenses numa torre de observação azul e branca de dois andares, onde estavam hasteadas bandeiras Israelenses. Ao saber que havia fotógrafos franceses por ali o Professor mostrou-se surpreso: "Eu não tinha idéia de que havia pessoal da mídia por ali, ou que eu fosse o alvo de sua atenção". Mas a AFP tem outra versão - como souberam dois professores de Colúmbia, Awi Federgruen e Robert Pollack. Eles escreveram suas conclusões para o Espectator de que "as fotos de Said jogando as pedras foi entregue a esta agência exatamente pelo próprio Professor Said".

Para alguém que havia escrito que os intelectuais precisam "dizer a verdade, da maneira mais direta, honesta e simples possível", Said parece ter passado maus momentos mentindo sobre os fatos a seu respeito. Talvez por que ele soubesse que não haveria nenhum preço a apagar, profissionalmente, por suas enganações.

Quando Weiner expôs as falsidades de Said, a resposta de Colúmbia foi não fazer absolutamente nada! "Surpreendentemente o Professor Said não foi nem apoiado nem criticado pelo Presidente [da Universidade]", escreveu Weiner num ensaio em Academic Questions, o Jornal da National Associations of Scholars. "Nem o Diretor, nem a junta de administradores, nem o Senado da Universidade sequer mencionaram a dissimulação de Said".

Para quem conheça a história de Colúmbia esta falta de interesse pela mentira de um de seus professores é impressionante, pois Said não foi o primeiro do Departamento de Inglês a ser descoberto numa série de mentiras públicas. Na década de 50, um instrutor chamado Charles Van Doren ganhou aplausos nacionais por sua brilhante apresentação no show "Twenty-One" da NBC. Estes aplausos se tornaram desprezo quando o show foi denunciado como manipulação, e Colúmbia esclareceu imediatamente que não poderia manter em seus quadros tal mentiroso. "É uma questão de moral, honestidade e integridade do ensino", disse o Diretor John G Palfrey, e acrescentou "se estes princípios merecem ser conservados, Van Doren não pode permanecer". (Como Weiner acentuou: "enquanto Van Doren pode ter sido iludido pelos produtores do programa a participar de uma competição desonesta, Said foi o único responsável por suas mentiras"). Por que os dois pesos duas medidas?

Em relação a meros mortais Colúmbia ainda insiste em honestidade. Há alguns meses atrás um estudante de 19 anos que mentiu que havia sofrido um acidente de carro para ter mais tempo para uma prova, foi suspenso por dois anos. Já Said, cuja lenda de exílio e perda de propriedade foi muito mais elaborada e iludiu muito mais gente, não sofreu nenhuma censura disciplinar.

Um Professor que dissemina mentiras é como um médico que receita veneno ou um juiz que aceita dinheiro de uma das partes. Todos são ameaças à sociedade, todos traem seus cargos. Médicos que matam podem ter seu registro caçado; juízes corruptos podem ser impedidos de julgar. Mas um professor que mente - ao menos em Colúmbia - permanece livre para continuar enganando. É de admirar que Edward Said continue dizendo mentiras?

sexta-feira, 5 de novembro de 2010

Arabism, not Zionism, caused the Jewish exodus



Let the truth be told: Arab nationalism and xenophobia, not Zionism, resulted in the exclusion and expulsion of the Jews. This must-read essay by professor Shmuel Trigano in the JCPA journal (The expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries 1920 - 1970: a history of ongoing cruelty and discrimination) gives a detailed account of the pattern of state-sanctioned discrimination, economic spoliation and violence which caused the Jewish exodus - obfuscated and denied in the current campaign to delegitimise Israel. For my comment, see below:

Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries. The 1940s were a turning point in this tragedy; of those expelled, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 in France and the United States. Today, they and their descendants form the majority of the French Jewish community and a large part of Israel's population.

In the countries that expelled Jews, a combination of six legal, economic, and political measures aimed at isolating Jews in society was instituted: denationalization; legal discrimination; isolation and sequestration; economic despoilment; socioeconomic discrimination; and pogroms or similar acts.

It is the custom to say that Zionism was responsible for this development. However, the region's anti-Semitism would have developed even without the rise of the state of Israel because of Arab-Islamic nationalism, which resulted in xenophobia.

The fact that these events have been obscured has served in the campaign to delegitimize Israel, and therefore to a large extent, the same population that suffered this oppression. The fate of Palestinian refugees, their proclaimed innocence, and the injustice they endured form the main thrust of this delegitimization. The Jewish refugees have suffered more than the Palestinian refugees and undergone greater spoliations. However, they became citizens of the countries of refuge, especially Israel and France, while Palestinians were ostracized from the Arab nations.

Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries: from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Yemen, including places where they had lived for twenty centuries. The 1940s were a turning point in this tragedy; of those expelled, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 in France and Canada. Today, they and their descendants form the majority of the French Jewish community and a large part of Israel's population.

How does one explain this exodus? It is the blind spot of contemporary political consciousness and an object of denial. There is not even an expression to name this major event. "The Forgotten Exodus" is the most commonly used term. But it actually masks the nature and impact of this historical event. "Forgotten" by whom, other than ideologues? "Exodus" is an apt description of the situation but not of its causes, which the adjective "forgotten" occults even more. For those who underwent the expulsion have not forgotten it at all. Moreover, it is also an important historical fact.

This is a major transnational phenomenon. Jewish communities were expelled either in their entirety or almost so. Communities of some significance remain in Iran, Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia. All the countries that expelled Jews have one thing in common: they belong to Islam (including Turkey and Iran, which are not Arab countries). However, it is hard to view this exodus as a whole. It largely took place over a thirty-year period (1940-1970) and covered a huge geographical area, from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Yemen.


The Statute of the Jews: Nevertheless, if one compares the facts in the various countries[1] an identical model emerges: Jews were systematically expelled after a de facto "Statute of the Jews" was instituted. A combination of six legal, economic, and political measures aimed at isolating Jews in society was instituted:


Denationalization

- Legal discrimination
- Isolation and sequestration
- Economic despoilment
- Socioeconomic discrimination
- Pogroms or similar acts


The denationalisation of the Jews: The Jews were isolated from their society by a legal process in many lands. This was the preliminary stage of their exclusion, which was followed by expulsion. A number of legal measures in various countries illustrate this point.

In Egypt the most articulate evolution occurred. It began with the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), a peace treaty between the Allies and the Ottomans that dismembered the Ottoman Empire and opened the way to the further creation of Arab (and Israeli) states. It addressed the question of nationality in Egypt and can be considered the first infringement of the rights of autochthonous Jews. The notion of belonging to a race (article 105) rather than a nation was introduced, thereby dissociating Jews from the majority of the population of the country. The next step was the nationality laws of 1927 and 1929, which favored jus sanguinis (or right of blood). An Egyptian was from then on defined as somebody who had Arab-Muslim affiliation.


The London Convention (1936) granted Egypt independence under King Farouk, and it was followed by a worsening of the nationality laws. According to additional nationality laws (in 1950, 1951, 1953, and 1956), autochthonous Jews became stateless: 40,000 people were turned into "foreigners" in their own country. In 1956, after the Sinai War, a new dimension was added: Egyptian nationality was taken away from anyone who committed acts in favor of enemy states or states with no relations with Egypt. In practice, all Jews were suspected of dual loyalty. This led ultimately to the accusation that all Jews were Zionists.

In Iraq, by the law of 9 May 1950, Jews who left Iraq were stripped of their nationality.

In Libya, the nationality laws of 12 June 1951 (art. 11, clause 27) decreed that the personal status of non-Muslims would be governed by their (religious) courts, in the manner of dhimmis during the premodern period. Jews were no longer allowed to vote or to hold political office.

Legal discrimination: A number of legal measures imposed restrictions on businesses and associations. Jewish communities and organizations were placed under supervision. Arabic became the sole language of public services.

In Libya, in 1953, Jews were subjected to restrictions and became victims of economic boycotts. The Maccabi sports club was forcibly opened to Arab members in 1954. A decree was issued on 9 May 1957 obliging Libyans with relatives in Israel to register at the Libyan boycott office, even though at that point, 90 percent of the Jews had already left. On 3 December 1958, Tripoli's Jewish community ceased to be an independent entity. Thereafter it was overseen by a state-appointed commissioner. Legal exclusion worsened. In 1960, Jews were prohibited from acquiring new possessions. They were no longer allowed to vote, hold public office, or serve in the army or the police. On 2 April 1960, Alliance Israélite Universelle schools were closed.

Similar developments occurred in Lebanon. As early as 1947, Jewish students were expelled from Beirut University. Jewish "Zionist" organizations (such as the Maccabi sports club) were forbidden. Jews were discharged from public service positions and Jewish youth movements banned.

In Iraq, Jewish history and Hebrew language instruction were prohibited in Jewish schools during the 1920s. Jews were expelled from public service and education in the 1930s. The Jewish schools' curricula were censored in 1932.

In Iran, Zionist activities (differentiated from "Jewish" activities) were banned in 1979. In 2000, discrimination developed in public service, universities, and public companies.

In Yemen, sharia law was instated in 1913, worsening the situation of the dhimmi. Decrees specifying forced conversion for orphans were issued between 1922 and 1928, while Jews were excluded from public service positions and the army.

In Syria, real estate purchase was prohibited to Jews in 1947, and Jews began to be discharged from public service positions. In 1967, Muslim principals were appointed to Jewish schools.

In Morocco, after independence in 1956, a process of Arabization of public services began, cutting the Jews off from the larger society. A dahir (decree) Moroccanizing Jewish charitable organizations was issued on 26 November 1958, endangering their freedom.

In Egypt, a long process of discrimination in the public service began in 1929. In 1945-1948, Jews were excluded from the public service. In 1947, Jewish schools were put under surveillance and forced to Arabize and Egyptianize their curricula. Community organizations were forced to submit their member lists to the Egyptian state after May 1948 and until 1950. In 1949, Jews were forbidden to live in the vicinity of King Farouk's palaces.

In Tunisia, a law concerning Judaism (11 July 1958) put an end to Jewish communities, replaced them with temporary "Israelite worship commissions," and suppressed the personal status of the Jews (inherited from the dhimmi status, which obliged the Jews to depend on their religious tribunals for all matters related to their personal status). In Tunisia too, independence (1956) led to the Tunisification of public services.

Turkey under the Young Turks (1923-1945) created hard-labor battalions for non-Muslim conscripts in May 1941.

Isolation and sequestration: Administrative harassment pushed the Jews into a state of isolation: the refusal to deliver passports, holding families' passports hostage, various boycotts by the Arab League, and interruption of postal relations with Israel created a difficult atmosphere. Jews became de facto prisoners.

For example, in July 1948, Iraq prohibited Jews from leaving the country.

By a new nationality law (12 June 1951), Libyan Jews were not allowed to have passports or Libyan nationality certificates, but only traveling documents whose renewal was not automatic. Postal relations with Israel were suspended in 1954, emigration to Israel was restricted, tourism to Israel banned.

Yemen prohibited Jews from leaving the country in 1949. Tunisia stopped postal relations with Israel in 1956. In 1973, Syria forbade Jews to communicate with people abroad. In Morocco too, starting in 1956 there were difficulties for Jews in obtaining passports (families were held hostage), and in 1958, postal relations with Israel were suppressed. In Iran it became difficult for Jews to obtain a passport starting in the 1980s. In Egypt, in the 1950s, passports were also taken away from people leaving the country. In June 1948, martial law banned Jews from leaving Egypt for Israel.

Economic despoilment: Jewish economic assets were also targeted. Their liquid assets, bank accounts, and property were submitted to sequestration and nationalization, held for ransom, and stolen when they departed.

In Turkey, capital taxation was imposed only on Jews in 1942. Iran confiscated Jewish possessions and real estate in 1979. Morocco held Jews, anxious to emigrate to Israel, for ransom in 1961, and the World Jewish Congress had to pay $250 for each Jew who was permitted to leave the country. In Tunisia, in 1961-1962, Jews who were leaving the country were allowed to take with them only one dinar (the equivalent today of three U.S. dollars). Yemen, in 1949, listed Jewish possessions and properties in order to hold them for ransom. In 1947, Syria discharged Jews from public service positions; in 1949, it seized Jewish financial assets.

Syria enacted a law to seize Jewish possessions (houses, estates, shops) in Aleppo and in Qamishli in April 1950, and to settle Palestinian refugees in Jewish quarters. From 1958 to 1961, Jews leaving the country were forced to transfer their possessions to the Syrian state and to pay considerable departure expenses. In 1960 and 1975, a Canadian Jewish sponsor paid a ransom to get people out of the country. In 1967, Jewish workers were fired in order to hire Palestinians, and Jewish doctors and pharmacists were laid off.

In Libya in 1961, Law #6 decreed that the possessions of Jews leaving for Israel be sequestrated. A general registrar was put in charge of liquidating them. In 1970, Jewish properties were confiscated.

In Iraq, considerable fines were imposed on wealthy Jews in July 1948, and in March 1951, the possessions of Jews leaving the country were frozen and the Jews were obliged to give up their citizenship.

In Egypt, in February 1949, the possessions of autochthonous Jews and those who were abroad were sequestrated.


Socioeconomic discrimination: Furthermore, the Jews suffered socioeconomic discrimination in Muslim and Arab countries. In some cases companies were made into cooperatives so that the Jewish entrepreneurs lost ownership.

In Iraq, the law of 12 January 1950 concerning bank control led to bankruptcy of stockbrokers, most of whom were Jewish.

Syria prohibited Jews from working in agriculture in February 1950.

In Libya, a ban against employing Jews in petroleum companies was instituted in the 1960s. Starting on 15 July 1961, a nationality certificate was required for every commercial action, but Jews could not obtain one.

In Morocco, starting in 1960, Jewish entrepreneurs and businessmen were obliged to have a Muslim partner.

The same development occurred in Tunisia in 1956: the national economy (industry and trade) became "cooperative," and Jewish entrepreneurs and businessmen were obliged to have a Muslim partner.

In Egypt in 1947, a law concerning companies decreed the Egyptianization of public and trade affairs: 75 percent of employees had to be "real" Egyptians (Arabs or Muslims). It was, in fact, an Islamization of personnel so that the majority of Jews would lose their jobs.

In 1948, the Yemeni ruler Imam Ahmad obliged Jews to pass on their expertise in crafts and trade to Yemeni Arabs before leaving the country.


Pogroms and related events: A series of pogroms and related events, such as riots, arrests, murders of public figures, and destruction of synagogues, occurred while colonial powers and Arab state police looked on passively. That gave the Jews the signal that it was time to leave.

In Egypt, anti-British and anti-Semitic riots broke out in several towns on 2-3 November 1945. Massive arrests occurred on 14-16 May 1948; one thousand Jews were detained and accused of being Zionists. On 2 November 1948, riots and lootings took place in Cairo and on 26 January 1952, "black Saturday" saw riots and acts of violence.

In Turkey, in June-July 1934, pogroms occurred in Thrace.

In Iraq, on 1-2 June 1941, in the Farhoud pogrom in Bagdad, 180 people were killed and 600 injured. In 1948, a wave of official anti-Jewish persecutions, including arrests and considerable fines, took place. Shafik Adass, a Jewish millionaire who was accused of selling surplus military stockpiles to Israel, was executed in September 1948. During 1949, Zionist-movement members were persecuted. Persecution also took place in Kurdistan in June 1950, when Jews were obliged to give up their possessions and houses. A synagogue was attacked in Baghdad on 14 June 1950; three people were killed and twenty injured.

In Libya, riots against those living in the Jewish quarters occurred in Tripoli in January 1945. Sixty percent of Jewish possessions were destroyed and 135 people were killed; soldiers acted as accomplices to the rioters. Jews were forced to evacuate. Jews in Hara, Tripoli, and Benghazi were put on remand. In 1948, there were more riots. An eighty-four-year-old Jewish leader, Halfalla Nahum, was murdered in Tripoli in 1963; during the summer of that year, other Jewish figures were attacked and injured. In 1967, riots broke out and ten people were killed. In 1969, an anti-Semitic campaign was initiated against the Jews, and Jewish cemeteries were razed in 1970. Sixty-four synagogues were destroyed in 1978, and seventy-eight synagogues were transformed into mosques, or, in the case of Benghazi, into Coptic churches.

In Lebanon, Jews were kidnapped and murdered during 1967. Following a series of kidnappings and murders of Jews, the murder of one of them, Dr. Albert Elia in September 1971, signalled to Jews that it was time to depart.

In Iran, a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism occurred in 1968. In 1979-1980,

Habib Elkanian, chairman of the Jewish community, was accused of Zionism. He and three other Jewish community figures, Avraham Brouhim, Albert Daniel, and Manotsar Kedochim, were executed.

In Syria, pogroms took place in several towns, synagogues were torched, and several hundred Jews were arrested in November 1947. The Almenasheh synagogue in Damascus was attacked on 5 August 1949; thirteen people were killed and thirty-two injured.

In Algeria, in 1929-1930, many incidents between Arab and Jews occurred in several towns in the Constantine area. On 5 August 1934, a pogrom in the name of jihad took place in Constantine. Twenty-seven people were killed, but the soldiers did not intervene. In 1957, there were murders in Oran and Medea; in March 1958, grenades in Boghari; and the day before Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) in 1959, grenades in Bou Saada. The Algiers synagogue was ransacked on 12 December 1960. In 1961, the Oran Jewish cemetery was desecrated and famed musician Raymond Leyris was murdered in Constantine. On 2 September 1961, a Jew was murdered on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). In Oran, especially in the Jewish quarters, murders and massacres were perpetrated on 5 July 1962, the very day of Algerian independence.

In Tunisia in January 1952, riots occurred in the hara (ghetto) of Tunis, with one person killed. In 1956, attacks on Jews took place at night. The old Tunis Jewish cemetery was expropriated in 1957, and the great Tunis synagogue was destroyed in 1960. Violent acts were perpetrated after the Bizerte affair of July 1961, in which the Jews were accused of having fought alongside French troops during bloody clashes between Tunisian and French troops around the French military base. A wave of departures of Jews ensued (15,000 in 1961 and 10,000 in 1962, all to France). The Tunis Jewish quarter was plundered on 6 June 1967, and the great synagogue was ransacked. Jews were murdered in Djerba in 1982, and the Djerba synagogue was attacked on 11 April 2002.

In Morocco, the Jewish quarter of Fez was ransacked in 1912. In May 1938, pogroms occurred in Oujda (with four Jews killed) and Jerada (thirty-nine killed, thirty injured). On 7-8 June 1948, anti-Jewish riots took place in Oujda and Jerada, and on 3 August 1954, in Sidi Kassem-Petitjean (with six people killed). In January 1961, at the time of Nasser's visit, during the "ten black days," there were twenty incidents in which police arrested and detained two hundred to three hundred Jews including twenty-five students. The kidnapping and forced conversion of a dozen young girls occurred in 1961-1962.

In Yemen, a series of riots and lootings took place in 1931 and 1947 (with eighty people killed). An accusation of ritual crime was levelled against the Jews in Sana'a in 1948.

All these events together created a massive complex of systematic - often gradual - discrimination. As a result of these abuses and violent acts, the Jewish communities were liquidated in two ways: expulsion, as in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria, or exclusion, as in Tunisia after independence, Morocco (1956-1961), Syria-Lebanon (after 1947), Turkey (1923-1945), Yemen, and Iran (1950s and 1970s).

Causes: Anti-Semitism would have developed even without the existence of the state of Israel because of Arab-Islamic nationalism, which resulted in xenophobia. In the twentieth century, hostility toward Jews was spreading well before Israel's creation: in Yemen, Syria, Mandatory Palestine, Turkey, and Algeria.


It is the custom to say that Zionism was responsible for this development. But Zionism is to be understood, in the worldview of the Islamic mind, in another perspective. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of intolerant Arab nationalism, long-dominated nations (such as the Armenians and the Jews) sought independence. This was understood by the Arab world as a rebellion not only against the new Arab nation-states but also against Islamic law, which puts non-Muslims in the inferior status of a dominated nation: the dhimmis.

Both the Armenians and the Jews were subjected to violent repression. The former were massacred by the Ottoman Empire in 1894-1895 - around 300,000 victims - and suffered a genocide - 1,200,000 victims - by the Turks in 1908. The latter in Mandatory Palestine suffered pogroms in 1920, 1929, 1936, and 1939. And the Jews in Muslim countries, as we have seen, were forced to leave. Hardly any Jews remain in the abovementioned countries, and the number of Christian Arabs is now dwindling in them as well.

The new Arab anti-Zionism contained classic anti-Semitic policies, as demonstrated by the "Statute of the Jews" that could be compared to the Vichy Statute of the Jews, except that it developed over a long time, in a huge geographical area, and at different periods. Jews were accused of being coresponsible with Israel for the war that the Arab states declared against the new state and then lost. Regardless of their ideological affiliation - communist, nationalist, Zionist, religious, and so on - they were subjected to special laws specifically aimed at Jews. They were expelled from all Arab-Muslim countries because a collective responsibility was imputed to them. This is typical anti-Semitic reasoning.

The Jews from Arab-Muslim countries were powerless. They had no army. They did not take part in the conflict. They were not responsible for triggering hostilities between the Arab states and Israel. That the Yishuv, the quasi-Jewish state that developed in Mandatory Palestine, became a state according to the United Nations Partition Plan was not also responsible for the war except for the scandal of its existence. Instead, the cause of the situation was the intolerance and imperialism of the new Arab states: before these attained independence, there were indeed no such states. Before the Western colonial empires there was another Islamic colonial empire, the Ottoman one. Palestine never existed as a political or cultural entity. The new nation-states - Israel included - were a product of the Western colonial empires and all were "invented." Why were these Jews in Arab countries persecuted and expelled if not as a result of an anti-Semitic ideology and policy? It was a continuation of the traditional Islamic anti-Judaism but defined in reference to the symbol of the rebellion of the Jewish dhimmis: Zionism.


Read article in full

My comment:


*Professor Trigano has been criticised for not providing a country-by-country study: this study does of course exist in his book La Fin du judaisme en terres d'Islam. I have summarised the chapters on Turkey, Yemen, Lebanon/Syria and Libya in this blog's sidebar.

*What he does not do on this occasion is explain that the Palestinian cause was the pan-Arab cause par excellence, and the Palestinians the spearhead of a xenophobic nationalism of anti-Jewish bigotry. He does that here.


*Pan-Arabism also victimised other non-Arab, non-Jewish minorities - the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Copts, etc.. Professor Trigano only mentions the Armenians. However, half a million foreigners - not just Jews - were expelled from Egypt in the 1950s.

*Professor Trigano has been criticised for not blaming Islam and traditional Koranic antisemitism, predating Arab nationalism, for the plight of the Jews. But Arab nationalism was largely based on Islam ('Arab nationalism is Islam', as someone once said) and Islamic categories of the Other - namely the concept of the dhimmi. Christians were prominent in the Arab nationalist movement - but in many cases ended up converting to Islam because they could not resolve this paradox.

* No mention in this essay of the fascist totalitarianism in Arab states that began with the victimisation of the Jews, but never ends with them. Magdi Allam 's excellent essay explains how the artificial straightjacket of Arab nationalism resulted in the cannibalisation of Middle Eastern identity.

quinta-feira, 4 de novembro de 2010

Palestina

ver: Desonestidade em imagens



As fronteiras do chamado - erroneamente, diga-se de passagem - mundo árabe são artificiais e, meio século atrás, as lealdades se estabeleciam em relação a clãs, famílias, cidades ou aldeias e seitas religiosas, não a países ou nações, uma importação européia que nem sequer teve tempo de se aclimatar ao Oriente Médio. A nacionalidade palestina, como identidade distinta, começou a ser elaborada somente nos anos 60.- Nelson Ascher -


Os palestinos são o povo mais novo de que se tem notícia. Começaram a existir num único dia e de uma forma quase sobrenatural e única na historia da humanidade, conforme testemunhado por Walid Shoebat, um ex-terrorista da OLP, que depois de convertido ao cristianismo reconheceu a mentira pela qual lutava e a verdade que combatia:

Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?

We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag

When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out.


Só essas afirmações vindas de um verdadeiro "palestino" já deveriam ter algum significado para um observador realmente neutro. De fato, nunca existiu algo como um povo palestino, uma cultura palestina ou um dialeto palestino. Nunca existiu um estado palestino. Os chamados palestinos são uma mistura de muçulmanos turcos, bósnios, egípcios, libaneses, sírios e árabes vindos de diferentes países da região.



As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education include. The fact is today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations. I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, Muslim Sherkas from Russia, Muslims from Bosnia and the Jordanians next door. My grandfather, who was a dignatary in Bethlehem County, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseini (the leader of the Palestinian Revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village "Beit Shahur" in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families...


-Walid Shoebat (وليد شويبات‎)-



There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough- Joseph Farah, jornalista árabe-americano e editor do World Net Daily (WND) -

There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937 -


There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not- Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian and professor of Middle East history in Princeton, 1946 -


It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria- Representant of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956 -


Alguns dos sobrenomes mais comuns entre os "palestinos" revelam os seus verdadeiros países de origem:

Masri (Egito) - como Mushir al-Masri, membro do HAMAS e do parlamento de Gaza.
Bardawil (Lago Bardawil - Egito) - Salah Bardawil, deputado do HAMAS na Faixa de Gaza
Iraqi (Iraque)
Tarabulsi (Tarabulus - Tripoli no Líbano)
Hourani (Houran, Síria) - O governador da província síria de Houran, Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitiu em 1934 que em apenas alguns meses mais de 30,000 sírios de Houran imigraram para a Palestina.
Husseini (Jordânia)
Saudi (Arábia Saudita)
Metzarwah (Egito)
Nashashibi (Síria)
Bushnak (Bósnia)
al-Husayni (Arábia Saudita)

al-Urdoni (Jordânia)
al-Lubnani (Líbano)



Um caso famoso é o do polemista e ativista político Edward Said, que afirmava ser um refugiado palestino e que foi desmascarado na revista “Commentary”, por Justus Reid Warner, em 1999. A partir de então o próprio Said mudou a história de seu nascimento e infância em edições posteriores de sua biografia.

Ele nasceu em Jerusalém enquanto seus pais passavam as férias ali, mas logo voltou à cidade onde estes viviam, o Cairo, no Egito. Foi lá que cresceu e foi educado antes de se mudar, por vontade própria, para os EUA. A firma de seu pai foi, no entanto, depredada, nos anos 50, por muçulmanos, porque sua família era cristã, e a fortuna dos Said foi, enfim, confiscada por Gamal Abdel Nasser. Said nunca foi um refugiado palestino nem fugiu dos israelenses. E quando isso foi descoberto, sua autoridade moral foi reduzida a nada.

Era como se soubéssemos que Elie Wiesel tivesse passado a guerra em Genebra e não em Auschwitz, como disse um observador.


Mas o caso mais emblemático é mesmo o do líder da OLP e "pai" do nacionalismo palestino, Yassir (Yasser) Arafat. Apesar de Arafat ter morrido - AIDS, de acordo com Ahmad Jibril, um dos líderes da OLP - afirmando que nasceu em Jerusalém em 4 de Agosto de 1929, a verdade é que seu registro de nascimento indica que ele nasceu em 24 de Agosto de 1929, no Cairo, Egito, pais no qual serviu o exército, estudou (Universidade do Cairo) e viveu até 1956.

A descoberta do seu certificado de nascimento e outros documentos pela Universidade do Cairo pôs fim ao debate sobre o seu verdadeiro local de nascimento (mesmo o seu biógrafo autorizado, Alan Hart, admite agora que ele nasceu no Cairo).



Territorio destinado ao Estado judeu e Partilha dos territorios no pós-guerra




















Acima (esquerda) esta um mapa da atual divisão dos países no oriente médio, no qual se pode ver 23 países muçulmanos (e/ou arabizados), que ocupam aproximadamente 640 vezes o territorio de Israel. Em vermelho esta a Jordânia, que junto com Israel formavam o território que até então era chamado de Palestina e controlado pelos britânicos após a derrota da Alemanha e do império Turco-Otomano na I Guerra Mundial (ver tratado Sykes-Picot).


Note (imagem da direita) que o territorio ao leste do rio Jordão também era parte da "Palestina", que também ele seria parte do futuro Estado de Israel e que ele é hoje um Estado árabe-palestino de fato. Que conveniente que os pan-arabistas e os defensores da causa palestina se esqueçam disso...


Minha posição é a de oposição a qualquer solução que envolva uma retirada de Israel de Judéia, Samária (Cisjordânia) e de Gaza, e contra a criação do assim chamado “estado palestino”. Na minha opinião, a área da Palestina já foi dividida em um estado palestino judaico (Israel) e um estado palestino árabe (Jordânia). Criar um terceiro estado palestino para a OLP não é nem do interesse de Israel, menos ainda é de interesse da Jordânia, e ainda menos do interesse destes árabes que serão obrigados a viver debaixo deste tipo de regime bárbaro. Mais do que isso, aceitar a criação deste tipo de estado significa premiar o trabalho terrorista, será a derrota da legalidade e um encorajamento sem tamanho para grupos terroristas.
- Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Diretor do Instituto Cultural da Comunidade Islâmica Italiana -



Em 1923 os britânicos dividiram o então território palestino em dois distritos administrativos. Judeus só poderiam ocupar o território a oeste do rio Jordão - o que significa que os britânicos tiraram 75% do que seria o Estado Judeu palestino original para apaziguar os muçulmanos da região e criar um estado árabe-palestino chamado Transjordânia.
Esse território foi dado ao Emir Abdullah (de Hejaz, no local que hoje é conhecido como Arábia Saudita), que sequer era um árabe-"palestino"...

Essa parte da então Palestina - então conhecida como Transjordânia - teve seu nome novamente trocado e, em 1946, ficou conhecida por seu nome atual: Jordãnia.
Em outras palavras: a parte oriental da Palestina - que formava 3/4 do território que seria usado para a criação do Estado Judeu - foi nomeada e renomeada, apagando assim qualquer ligação com seu passado. Já os 25% restantes da Palestina (agora reduzida ao território a oeste do rio Jordão) seriam destinados a criação do futuro Estado judeu palestino.

Encorajados e incitados pelo crescente nacionalismo árabe, a população muçulmana no território a oeste do Jordão (Israel), sob o comando do Mufti de Jerusalém, Hadj Amin Al Husseini (1893-1974) - tio de Yassir Arafat e aliado de Hitler - lançou ataques contra judeus, que resultaram em massacres como o ocorrido em Hebron em 1929 e a Revolta Árabe de 1936-39.

Lista de ataques árabes contra judeus antes da criação do Estado de Israel e da "ocupação" de Gaza e da Judéia e Samaria:





Em 1947 a ONU, novamente na tentativa de apaziguar os árabes, aprova a resolução 181 com o plano de partilha que dividia (outra vez) os 25% restantes do território da Palestina em um Estado Palestino judaico e um SEGUNDO Estado árabe-palestino (sendo a Transjordânia/Jordãnia o primeiro). O que foi aceito pelos judeus e rejeitado pelos árabes.

No dia 14 de maio de 1948 foi criado o Estado de Israel, e os judeus - tanto os nativos (mizrahis), que viveram séculos sob a opressão muçulmana, quanto os europeus (sefarditas) da Peninsula Ibérica e Mediterrâneo, nativos das terras da Inquisição, e os da Alemanha e leste europeu (ashkenazes) - tornaram-se israelenses.

Já no dia seguinte, tropas de 7 paises vizinhos - Egito, Jordânia, Síria, Líbano, Arábia Saudita, Iraque e Yemen - atacaram o recém criado Estado judeu.

A maior parte dos árabes que imigraram para o que veio a ser o Estado de Israel foram encorajados a fugir por seus próprios líderes, para facilitar o extermínio de judeus, e foram com a promessa de que as propriedades tomadas dos judeus lhes seriam entregues após o triunfo árabe.

Não houve violações. É tudo mentira. Não foram esventradas mulheres grávidas. Era propaganda, para que os árabes fugissem e os exércitos árabes pudessem invadir e expulsar os judeus- Mohammed Radwan, combatente árabe de Deir Yassin, Middle East Times, 20 de Abril de 1998 -

A rádio árabe falou de mulheres a serem mortas e violadas, mas não é verdade…eu creio que a maior parte dos que morreram eram combatentes e mulheres e crianças que os ajudaram. Os lideres árabes cometeram um grande erro. Exagerando as atrocidades eles pretendiam encorajar as pessoas a lutar, mas acabaram por criar o pânico e as pessoas fugiram- Ayish Zeidan, aldeão de Deir Yassin, Daily Telegraph, 8 Abril 1998 -











Origem do nome 'Palestina'

A palavra "Palestina" é uma designação genérica para a terra de Israel criada pelo imperador romano Adriano. No ano de 135 d.e.c ele sufocou a revolta dos israelitas sob a liderança de Bar-Kokhba. Seu alvo era acabar definitivamente com a memória de Israel e de Jerusalém. Com essa intenção, ele mudou o nome de Jerusalém para "Aelia Capitolina". À terra de Israel ele deu o nome de seus maiores inimigos, os filisteus.

Com toda a franqueza, Zuheir Mohsen (Muhsen), um dos mais importantes representantes da OLP, afirmou em entrevista ao jornal holandes Trouw em 1977:

Não existe um povo palestino. A criação de um Estado palestino é um meio para a continuação de nossa luta contra Israel e em prol da unidade árabe. Mas na realidade não existe diferença entre jordanianos e palestinos, sírios e libaneses. Todos nós fazemos parte do povo árabe.
Falamos da existência de uma identidade palestina unicamente por razões políticas e estratégicas, pois é do interesse nacional dos árabes contrapor a existência dos palestinos ao sionismo. Por razões táticas a Jordânia, que é um país com território definido, não pode reivindicar Haifa ou Yaffa. Mas como palestino eu posso exigir Haifa, Yaffa, Be'er Sheva e Jerusalém. Entretanto, no momento em que nossa soberania sobre toda a Palestina estiver consolidada, não devemos retardar por nenhum momento a unificação dela com a Jordânia


Azmi Bishara, famoso lider árabe-israelense que luta contra a "ocupação", numa entrevista para um canal de Israel:
"There is no Palestinian nation. It's a colonial invention. When were there any Palestinians?"











"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children--all this in the service of political purposes...."
- Khaled Al-Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war


Imigração árabe


No início do sec. XX -- apesar de mais de 2000 anos de invasões, perseguições e conversões forçadas -- os judeus ainda formavam uma parte consideravel da população palestina. E maioria das referências a árabes na Palestina antes de 1917 se referem a cristãos, e não a muçulmanos.

É importante atentar ao fato de que as estimativas e os censos conduzidos pelos conquistadores muçulmanos são parciais e não confiáveis. Por isso, as informações e dados normalmente aceitos vem de fontes não-muçulmanas, sendo elas de turistas ou políticos, tanto árabes quanto não-árabes.


"Depois de descrever a complexa composição étnica do Império Otomano, Karl Marx começa sua descrição da população judia de Jerusalém com o comentário de que “a população sedentária de Jerusalém é de umas 15,500 almas, das quais 4,000 são muçulmanas e 8,000 judeus"
Ibid, pag 173-174 sobre o artigo escrito em 1854 por Marx, em conexão com o início da Guerra da Criméia, uma de cujas origens foi a disputa pela custódia da Igreja do Santo Sepulcro.- Shlomo Avineri, em "21 voces maestras del judaismo contemporaneo" , de Bernardo Kliksberg (compilador), pág. 175, Editorial Milá, Buenos Aires -

Os números de Marx se mostram fiéis (algo a se louvar, dado o seu péssimo hábito de falsificar dados...) ao de outros, como os do cônsul da Prússia, que afirmava que a população de Jerusalém em 1845 era de 7.120 judeus, 5.000 muçulmanos, 3.390 cristãos, 800 soldados turcos e 100 europeus
- “Jerusalem: Illustrated History Atlas”, Martin Gilbert, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1978 -

Tendo em mente que Jerusalém sempre foi a mais populosa das cidades da Palestina, fica fácil entender o motivo pelo qual tantos estrangeiros que visitavam a Terra Santa chamassem a atenção para a desolção daquela terra - alguns inclusive evocando profecias bíblicas:


There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent; not for thirty miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings … Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho lies a mouldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature… A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
- Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad” (American Pub. Co., 1869) -

Until today (1888), no people has succeeded in establishing national dominion in the Land of Israel. No national unity, in the spirit of nationalism, has acquired any hold there. The mixed multitude of itinerant tribes that managed o settle there did so on lease, as temporary residents. It seems that they await the return of the permanent residents of the land.- Professor Sir John William DossonModern Science in Bible Lands, London: Harper and Brothers, 1889, pp. 449-450.

But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude…. Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter — “the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants. (Jeremiah, ch.44 v.22)
- Reverend Samuel Manning, “Those Holy Fields” (London, 1874), pp.14-17

...the mosque is empty of worshipers… The Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalem’s population (The entire city of Jerusalem had only one mosque?)
- Muqaddasi, Arab writer in 985, quoted by Erich Kahler who cites this statement from Knowlege of Crimes, p.167, in The Jews Among the Nations (New York: F. Ungar, 1967), p. 144.

Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years… It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement- Ibn Khaldun in 1377, quoted by Yahya Armajami, Middle East Past and Present (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 143.

In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life… A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of Cæsarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted… I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us.- B. W. Johnson, “Young Folks in Bible Lands”: Chapter IV, (1892)


How melancholy is this utter desolation. Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, to relieve the dull monotony … Much of the country through which we have been rambling for a week appears never to have been inhabited, or even cultivated; and there are other parts, you say, still more barren.- W.M. Thomson, “The Land and the Book” (London: T. Nelsons & Sons, 1866); and “Southern Palestine and Jerusalem” (1882).

During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 CE], the caliph and governors of Syria and the Holy Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons.- James Parkes, “Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine”(Harmondsworth, Great Britain: 1970), p.66.


In 1695-1696, the Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi), wrote reports about visits to the Holy Land. (There are those who claim that he did not personally visit the Holy land but collected reports from other visitors.) He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people – all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people – half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families – all Christians. The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites. Hadriani Relandi, “Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrate” written in Latin, Published in 1714, Utrecht, ex libraria Guilielmi Broedelet (Trajecti Batavorum)


Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound. . .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country.- Alphonse de Lamartine, “Recollections of the East”, Vol. 1 (London 1845) p.268

Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride.”- William Thackeray, “From Jaffa To Jerusalem” (1844)

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.- James Finn, British consul in Palestine in 1857, British Foreign Office Documents 78/1294, Pol. No. 36
_________________________________
Como visto acima, a desolação da terra e a minúscula população muçulmana - praticamente não havia muçulmanos fora de Jerusalém (exceto por 120 em Nablus) - foram documentadas por muitos historiadores árabes e observadores estrangeiros. De acordo com Hadriani Relandi (Adriaan Reland) não havia UM muçulmano sequer em Gaza no sec. XVII...

"Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata" - um minucioso levantamento geográfico da Palestina em 1696, escrito pelo holandes Adriaan Reland e publicado por Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, em 1714.

Nablus: 120 muçulmanos, 70 samaritanos
Nazaré: 700 habitantes - todos cristãos
Umm al-Fahm: 50 habitantes -10 famílias, todos cristãos
Gaza: 550 habitantes - 300 judeus e 250 cristãos
Tiberias: 300 habitantes, todos judeus
Safed: 200 habitantes, todos judeus
Jerusalém :5000 habitantes - 3,500 judeus, 1000 cristãos e 500 muçulmanos


Só após a conquista da Terra Santa pelos britânicos que os muçulmanos passaram a imigrar de forma maciça ruma a Palestina.

• In 1930/31, Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote about the Arabs in Palestine: “We found it inhabited by fellahin (Arab farmers) who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria… Large areas were uncultivated… The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin’s lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the bedouin (Arab nomads).”

• The British Hope-Simpson Commission recommended, in 1930, “Prevention of illicit immigration” to stop the illegal Arab immigration from neighboring Arab countries.

• The British Governor of the Sinai (1922-36) reported in the Palestine Royal Commission Report: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.”

• The governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Houran had moved to Palestine.

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Holy Land, noted in 1939 that “far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.”


Os árabes que agora se dizem nativos da Terra Santa invadiram o território após 1917, vindos de países vizinhos - principalmente do Egito, Jordânia, Síria, Líbano, Kuwait, Arábia Saudita e Iraque. Nenhum desses países existia como nação antes de 1913. Eles não passavam de uma desordenada coleção de tribos, constantemente lutando entre si e tentando dominar uns aos outros. Infelizmente, esses invasores trouxeram para a Palestina sua velha "cultura" de violencia e tentativas constantes de dominação sobre os vizinhos. Muitos deles eram párias ou criminosos fugindo de seus países de origem. Outros foram aceitos pelo regime britânico como mão de obra barata e lhes foi permitido ocupar futuro território judeu.

Como pode Yassir Arafat ser um "refugiado palestino" se, como foi dito antes, ele nasceu no Egito em 1929? Sequer existiam refugiados em 1929...


Na sua propaganda, os árabes/arabizados que hoje se identificam como palestinos, constantemente exigem de Israel e do mundo que reconheçam os seus direitos "pré-1948". Isso é pouco mais de 60 anos atrás. Estranhamente, pra quem diz ter uma ligação tão antiga com essa terra, eles se recusam a aceitar qualquer acordo que vá mais longe e que reconheça seus direitos "históricos" sobre o território antes dessa data...
Há alguns anos um negociador israelense propos que, ao invés de pré-1948, fossem reconhecidos os direitos palestinos pré-1917, o que foi prontamente negado.


A Margem Ocidental do Jordão e Gaza estavam sob domínio árabe de 1948 a 1967, ou seja, nas mãos de jordanianos e egípcios. Se naquela época houvesse uma "questão palestina" como a conhecemos hoje, por que não lhes foi concedido um Estado quando essa região estava sob domínio árabe? Simplesmente porque os "palestinos" nunca foram reconhecidos como um povo autônomo, sempre foram considerados 'árabes' jordanianos ou sírios.

"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people"- Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to the PLO leader Yassir Arafat -

"Palestine was part of the Province of Syria... politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." - The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted this in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."- Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council

Durante décadas os jordanianos foram firmes defensores da bandeira "A Jordânia é a Palestina". Essa posição era usada como justificativa para anexação da Cisjordânia, e defendia que a Jordânia/Palestina era um único e indivisível país. Afirmações como essa foram feitas por vários membros do governo e da monarquia jordaniana:

We are the government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.- Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza' al-Majali, 23 August 1959 -


Palestine and Transjordan are one.- King Abdullah, Arab League meeting in Cairo, 12 April 1948 -


Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.- Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February 1970 -

Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations.- Jordanian Minister of Agriculture, 24 September 1980 -


The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.
- King Hussein 1981 -

O nome "palestinos" surgiu oficialmente apenas em 1964, quando o Alto Comissariado da Palestina solicitou à Liga Árabe a fundação de uma Organização Para a Libertação da Palestina (OLP).
O semanário egípcio El Mussawar escreveu a respeito:


"A criação de uma nação palestina é o resultado de um planejamento progressivo, pois o mundo não admitiria uma guerra de cem milhões de árabes contra uma pequena nação israelense".


Antes de 1964 os moradores da "Palestina" ainda eram chamados apenas de "árabes". Em 15 de maio de 1948, quando sete exércitos árabes atacaram o recém-criado Estado de Israel, os árabes da Palestina foram convocados a deixarem temporariamente a região colocando-se em segurança até que Israel e os judeus estivessem aniquilados. Foram os próprios países árabes que animaram os palestinos a saírem dali; eles não foram expulsos pelos israelenses. Em torno de 68% deles partiram sem jamais ter visto um único soldado israelense.

Um refugiado palestino resumiu a questão com as seguintes palavras: "O governo árabe disse-nos: "Saiam para que possamos entrar". Assim, nós saímos, mas eles não entraram".