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.

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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?


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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?

Arabism, not Zionism, caused the Jewish exodus

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/

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.


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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.

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:

http://www.arabisraeliconflict.info/fact5-violence

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+before+2000/Which+Came+First-+Terrorism+or+Occupation+-+Major.htm

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

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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".

Do Israelis from Arab countries weaken democracy?

Those who condemn the Israel of Likud, Shas and Israel Beiteinu for being undemocratic point to the pre-1967 days as the flowering of Western-German-Jewish democracy.

On the heels of the recent September 13 Time magazine cover that purports to show why Israelis don’t care about peace, Roger Cohen of The New York Times wrote an oddly timed op-ed about the very same topic (“Israelis have better things to do than dream of peace).

In his redundant article he included a quote from the author and journalist Tom Segev: “They really don’t believe in peace, and the million recent arrivals from the former Soviet Union didn’t bring democratic values. Democracy is weaker.”

Segev’s comment about the Russian- Israelis, as if they are “recent” arrivals, when they have been here 20 years now, is surprising.

What is more interesting is why he choose to slander the entire Russian community and single it out for the supposed weakening of democracy. What are these “democratic values” that Israel had before 1990 and that are sorely lacking today? The condemnation of the Russians for ruining democratic Israel is reminiscent of a December 2004 interview in Haaretz with journalist and writer Amos Elon by Ari Shavit.

Elon, who was then living in “exile” in Italy because he had become estranged from the Israel that had provided him with fame and luxury, called the country a “quasi-fascist” state with “religious people [who] would be better off behind bars and not in politics.”

He complained that Israel was no longer a democratic Western country, and summed up his views with: “There was provinciality here. [in Israel]. There was this upstart’s arrogance.

I’m not surprised when you look at the population. We know where it comes from. Either from the Arab countries or from Eastern Europe.”

Here Elon adds the category of Jews from “Arab countries” to the reasons why Israel became, in his view, a non-Western nondemocratic society. The argument over Israeli society’s lack of democracy thus tends to decline into the realm of blaming “others,” especially immigrants, for taking away the Western democracy that once flourished here.

But it depends partly on the background of the beholder. Segev was born in 1935 to parents who fled Germany that year. His first language was German, which his parents spoke at home. Elon too was born to German- Jewish parents; he explained to Shavit “my parents’ friends were all immigrants from Germany and Austria. The big library at home was all German... But they were really the first free Jews. And the first Europeans.

They built a civil society and believed obsessively in Bildung, which is self-improvement through the fostering of social concerns.”

From the perspective of Segev and Elon, who in many ways represent a very strong stream within elite Israeli society, the complaint can be boiled down to the fact that non-German Jews ruined their country. It is an extraordinary insult to the millions of Jews who have come here, especially considering that, far from being haters of democracy, many of them yearned to breath free in the undemocratic states they fled.

The Jews of the Arab countries, whether Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria or Iraq, were almost all firm absorbers of the latest Western ideas in the early 20th century. Some of them became ardent socialists before they became Zionists, if they became Zionists at all. The Jews of the Soviet Union, especially the refuseniks, were all democrats to the core.

THERE IS a question that must be asked of those like Segev (Elon died in 2009 so he cannot be asked) who believe that it is the Jewish immigrants who came after 1950 that brought nondemocratic values with them.

How democratic was Israel in the old days? Those who condemn the Israel of Likud, Shas and Israel Beiteinu for being undemocratic almost all point to the utopian pre-1967 days as the flowering of Western-German-Jewish democracy.

Let’s recall that Israel for a second. Pre- 1967, this was a one-party state whose government was dominated, since its inception in 1948, by the Labor Party. It was more akin to the democracy found in Italy, Japan or Mexico in that period than in the UK and the US. The democracy of those years is the one that kept Arab communities under military rule, where Arab citizens, although they could vote, faced all sorts of mobility restrictions, including curfews. Pre-1967 was heavy on censorship generally, so much so that the Beatles were banned from coming in 1965 for fear they would corrupt public morality. The Israel of old was undemocratic in its allocation of land to new immigrants and in its treatment of Jews from Arab countries, so much that ethnic riots erupted in Haifa in 1959. It was pre-1967 Israel that crafted a Supreme Court with no checks or balances, and that elects itself – probably the least democratic institution in the country.

This is not to condemn the accomplishments of the old Israel that didn’t include Sephardi, religious, Russian or Ethiopian Jews; surely the pre-immigration Jewish leadership accomplished great things, but they weren’t paragons of democracy, and the arrival of their Jewish cousins after 1950 has done nothing but improve democracy. It was Sephardim who brought the first change in political power, in 1977, and it is Russians, the religious and the Ethiopians, not to mention the Israeli Arabs, who have contributed greatly to the democratic fabric.

The fact that some find this diverse country so abhorrent says more about the “democracy” they wanted, the one that was to be composed only of their colleagues and culturally- linked groups, than it does about the immigrants. Those who call themselves cultured and slander other groups are correct to exile themselves to Europe, which bans the burka and minarets and has proven it is incapable of welcoming outsiders.

Israel may have failed the Western European test by opening its gates wide to people from the Arab, Slavic and African worlds, but it is more democratic for it.