.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/09/06  at  05:39 AM    #1

It is astonishing how people think. Please answer the following questions honestly:

1-How do you consider the situation of Israel in Palestine? - An occupation force

- forced palestineans out of their country to occupy

- Killing, kidnapping and arresting palestinens all the time

- Destroying Lebanon now, klling hundreds of civilians and making millions homeless.

- Kidnapping, and arresting ministers and members of parliaments who came through democratic process.

2- who is really the terrorist?

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/09/06  at  11:22 AM    #2

Welcome to the site, Samara. I'm glad you asked these questions, because many other people in Egypt have them as well.

Here is information in response to your questions (html link here - pdf link here):

Origins of the Problem

The State of Israel was created in a peaceful and legal process by the United Nations. It was not created out of Palestinian lands. It was created out of the Ottoman Empire, ruled for four hundred years by the Turks who lost it when they were defeated in World War I. There were no “Palestinian” lands at the time because there were no people claiming to be Palestinians.

...In 1947, the UN partition plan mandated the creation of two states on the remaining 20 percent of the Palestine Mandate: the State of Israel for the Jews, and another state for the Arabs. The Arabs rejected their state, and launched a war against Israel. This is the primal cause of the Arab refugee problem.

The Arab refugees were roughly 725,000 people who fled because of the war that the Arab states – not the Palestinian Arabs -- started. The Arab states - dictatorships all - did not want a non-Arab state in the Middle East. The rulers of eight Arab countries whose populations vastly outnumbered the Jewish settlers in the Turkish Empire, initiated the war with simultaneous invasions of the newly created state of Israel on three fronts. Nascent Israel begged for peace and offered friendship and cooperation to its neighbors. The Arab dictators rejected this offer and answered it with a war of annihilation against the Jews. The war failed. But the state of war has continued uninterruptedly because of the failure of the Arab states –Saudi Arabia and Iraq in particular – to sign a peace treaty with Israel. To this day, the Arab states and the Palestinians refer to the failure of their aggression and the survival of Israel as an-Nakba – the catastrophe.

Had there been no Arab aggression, no war, and no invasion by Arab armies whose intent was overtly genocidal, not only would there have been no Arab refugees, but there would have been a state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza since 1948.

[.....]

Zionist pioneers from the middle of the 19th century onward joined the local Jewish communities in rebuilding a Jewish homeland in what was then the Turkish Empire by purchasing land from the Turkish Crown and from Arab landowners (effendi). There was no invasion, no conquest, and no theft of Arab land – and certainly not of a land of Palestine, since the Arabs living in the region had been Turkish subjects for 400 years. Unarmed and possessing no military, the Jews bought so much land from Arabs that in 1892, a group of effendi sent a letter to the Turkish Sultan, requesting that he make it illegal for his subjects to sell land to the Jews. Their successors did the same thing, via a telegram, in 1915. Evidently, the very presence of Jews owning land in the Middle East – however legally acquired – was offensive to some.

It is indisputable that there was no theft, because no one com- plained of any. No Arabs were driven from their homes. In fact, as a demographic study published by Columbia University demonstrates the Arab population of the area grew tremendously during this period in part because of the economic development that the Jews helped to generate. Between 1514 AD and circa 1850, the Arab population of this region of the Turkish Empire was more or less static at about 340,000. It suddenly began to increase around 1855, and by 1947 the Arab population stood at about 1,300,000 -- almost quadrupling in less than 100 years. The exact causes of this population rise are beyond the scope of this essay, but the causal correlation between this independently documented phenomenon and the Zionist enterprise is beyond rational argument.

Far from driving out any Arabs, stealing their land or ruining their economy, the work of the Jewish pioneers in the 19th and early 20th centuries actually enabled the Arab population to quadruple, the economy to enter the modern era, and the society to slough off the shackles of serfdom that typified the effendi-fellah (land-owner/serf) relationship of the Ottoman era. An Arab working in a Jewish factory or farming community could earn in a month what his father earned in a year eking out a living as a subsistence-level farmer using medieval technology. Arab infant mortality plummeted and longevity increased as the Jews shared their modern medical technology with their Arab neighbors.

(Continued in next comment.)

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/09/06  at  11:23 AM    #3

(Continued from previous comment.)

Much of the land that the Zionists purchased was desert and swamp, uninhabited and deemed uninhabitable by the Arabs. Modern agrarian techniques instituted by the Jews and the blood and sweat of thousands of idealistic Zionists reclaimed that land and turned it into prime real estate with flourishing farms and rapidly growing com- munities sporting modern technology and a healthy market economy. As a result, Arab migrants poured into the region from surrounding states, with hundreds of thousands seeking a better life and greater economic opportunity. Based on the above, it is fair to suggest that a significant plurality, if not a majority, of Arabs living in Israel today owe their very existence to the Zionist endeavor.

Validation of this history, which is quite at variance with the standard Arab propaganda, comes from a surprising source. Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradhawi, international Arab terrorist and lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, in a televised speech in May, 2005, chided his followers with the following words: “Unfortunately, we [Arabs] do not excel in either military or civil industries. We import everything from needles to missiles…How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us, despite being so few? It has become superior through knowledge, through technology, and through strength. It has become superior to us through work. We had the desert before our eyes but we didn’t do anything with it. When they took over, they turned it into a green oasis. How can a nation that does not work progress? How can it grow?”

You ask about Israel "Killing, kidnapping and arresting palestinens all the time."

This statement is not accurate. Israel doesn't target Palestinian civilians. Surely you are aware of this. Palestinian civilians are killed when they are too close to the terrorists, targeted by Israel, who are actively engaged in killing Israeli citizens.

As you know, the Palestinians have made it their business for over a decade to go into Israel wherever possible and intentionally kill civilians, blowing up restaurants and other public places. Israel has never done anything like that to the Palestinians.

You ask about Israel "Kidnapping, and arresting ministers and members of parliaments who came through democratic process."

Here you are talking about the ministers of the Hamas government, which as you know, is dedicated to destroying Israel, and to killing Israeli civilians whenever possible, as Hamas has been doing for over a decade. That's an act of war, and Israel has a rightful obligation to defend itself and protect the safety of its people.

Samara, in Egypt you hear a lot of propaganda. But you have access to the Internet. Look around. See things with your own eyes. Find the truth.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/09/06  at  11:54 AM    #4

The above posts have been quoted in a new article.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/10/06  at  10:40 AM    #5

Thank you for this very concise explanation. It should be mailed to all news aqencies and blogs so everyone is on the same page regarding these historical facts.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  08/10/06  at  11:53 AM    #6

Dear Samara,

Thank you for contacting this blog!

Vik has written one of the finest, encapsulated histories of the region I have ever encountered. It is dispassionate and accurate.

The problem is that dispassionate and accurate history does not appear in textbooks throughout the Middle East and therefore it is not accepted by those in your area when confronted with the truth - which is obvious to most of the world.

Some nations rewrite and sanitize history i.e. Japan, where their citizens are generally ignorant of their history vis a vis warcrimes in China and the causes and effects of WWII; other countries in the world (i.e. China) have even gone so far as to install thick firewalls to prevent their citizens from accessing information and uncensored news from the internet; yours seems to be colored by hate.

History is history. The truth is the truth. And as a great man once said, "The truth shall set you free".

But you, Samara, live in a region that perception, hearsay, and political/religious agenda eclipses the truth and history. To put it bluntly, you and your people have been kept in the dark. It is not by accident Osama Bin Laden hides in a cave; it is where he is most comfortable and where he would like to keep all Muslims.

The idea that leaders would keep people in the dark or in caves and imprisoned intellectually is not a recent phenomena: Plato tackled this in The Republic Book VII in The Allegory of the Cave. I urge you to read this and apply it to the Middle East.

Your first step to enlightenment was to seek answers outside of your region and opinion - even indignantly.

Sometimes it is also necessary to reach true understanding of any situation or belief, to study it from the opposite perspective. My stepfather used to tell me that there were three sides to every story, "His side, her side, and the truth." In this light, I would also urge you to consult some Israeli blogs and ask the same questions.

We would all like to help you along your journey by answering your questions in a fair, balanced, and considerate manner.

We're not trying to indoctrinate you to our views, but instead, give you the opportunity to form your opinion based on accurate information and reliable resources.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   on  11/25/06  at  08:30 PM    #7

A lot of the current problems in the Middle East come straight through the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the involvement of so many players since then. I think anyone wanting to better understand the issues really needs to read up on that first before even proceding to the more recent history of the last 50 years. I would recommend you just block out the words Arabs, Jews and Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, etc, otherwise whatever your bias, your conclusions will be fundamentally colored one way or the other. If you do this you will clearly see why all the myriads of indigestable conflicts consume the region so doggedly today and are creating a self-reinforcing inflammatory cycle.