This is very insightful -- thanks for this historic analysis. I knew the story of ethnic Germans in Russia, but was not familiar with the details of mass displacements caused by Pakistan and Bangladesh formation. I can also add mass displacements of Greek and Tatars, also in Soviet Russia and also accompanied by brutality and mass casualties. Comparing these recent displacements of peoples with Palestinians puts things in the perspective and highlights, once again, the double standard applied to Israel since its creation.
I covered only the three major displacements that happened around the same period and involved either Allied or Arab powers. But I appreciate your reference to Greek and Crimean Tatar displacements as they are relevant comparators too. I will mention them in Part 2 of this essay, which I hope to publish next month.
You left out the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Is it time to demand the right of return to Occupied Constantinople?
I am reminded of a somewhat similar and less-fraught exchange of populations between the US and Canada. The United Empire Loyalists left the US for Canada after the American Revolution and helped spur the development of Canada. Over the years, Canada and the US have been on mainly friendly terms (except for that "contretemps" in 1812). Also, there has been a slow "brain drain" or "talent drain" from Canada to the US that has been going on for well over a century at this point.
My immigration lawyer in the 1980s wrote the textbook used in law schools about US immigration law. According to him, about one third of Canadians could get a US passport on demand, and well over half of all Canadians could get a US green card on demand, at that time.
I am not so sure this remains true currently, because in the last decade Canada has remade itself in a way so as to be almost unrecognizable, in many respects. If one trusts surveys and polls, the vast majority of Canadians are not very happy about this.
To connect this topic to STEM, I am going to bring up a subject that many are loathe to approach. I heard it from the Israeli ambassador to the US in a speech in Northern California.
If one looks at the Western World, a large fraction of those who do exceptionally well in STEM are Jewish. My own area of STEM is well over half Jewish. I have numerous Jewish colleagues. Of my Christian and atheist colleagues, a large fraction of them also discovered through genealogy that there is a "Jew in the woodpile"; i.e., they have some Jewish heritage or ancestry a few centuries in the past. I might also be in that category. I do not know. I am not that interested to dig around.
So who are those who are succeeding in STEM in Israel? One would expect that Israel would be a STEM powerhouse. And it does seem to be emerging as one.
However, who does best in STEM in Israeli schools and universities? A substantial fraction of those who perform exceptionally well in STEM in Israel are Christian and Muslim Arabs.
How do I explain this? I think it is because performance in STEM comes down to three things:
(1) brainpower
(2) creativity and imagination
(3) diligence
Anecdotally and through studies, diligence seems to be the most important, followed by creativity and imagination, and finally, intelligence. And who tries hardest in various countries and societies? Those who are on the bottom of the pile, like the South and East Asian communities in the US currently (and before them, the Jewish communities in the US). And the people at the bottom of the pile in Israel are not the Jews, but the Christians and Muslims and atheists and Arabs, etc. So, they try harder, and are more dedicated, and they do well.
So the nonJewish Israelis do much better in STEM than they would have done in the Arab lands around Israel. It is about culture and the atmosphere and the environment. Israel has created a culture and an environment where STEM talent can thrive, and it can flourish.
The Islamic world, before al Ghazali, used to be a place where STEM was nurtured. But since al Ghazai published his treatise "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", it has fallen into a dark age. And it still has not emerged from this dark age, about 1000 years later. STEM is not particularly appreciated in most Islamic cultures, unfortunately.
Israel is showing its neighbors that they can actually do STEM. It is a light, it is a beacon. And that is why so many are anxious to sign peace treaties with Israel and to emulate Israel.
If this succeeds, the world and all of humanity will reap the benefits.
Palestinian communities allowed entry go to work to take over the nation that accepts them. They act as a separate ethnic group intent on domination, and do not integrate into the nation that accepts them. This is as true in Lebanon and Egypt as it was in Kuwait. The relations inside Jordan with Palestinians are uneasy.
This is visible in the United States Palestinian communities as well. They are the leaders of the anti-semitic hatred and calls to war in the USA. There is little difference between the Palestinian's relationship to Israel and Palestinian's relationship to every other Arab nation.
Second, the Palestinians have become a pawn, mostly a pawn of Iran, but also a pawn used by the rest of the Arab world. The Islamic world is mostly a world of dictatorship, whether the nation's leaders are called royalty or dictator or president. The two most democratic nations are Syria and Iran. However, Iran is not Arab, it is Persian, and Iran has a deep history of conquest. Iran is the only Shia nation in the world. Shia are the result of the Sunni-Shia schism after the death of Mohammed.
When Mohammed died, his top generals that surrounded him slaughtered every relative and favorite that Mohammed had in his life. The evidence suggests strongly that those men hated Mohammed, and did not believe in his war cult --- that they wanted to destroy it. But, after successfully taking over, they apparently decided to keep the machine of islam going for their own benefit.
Shia are the other side of that slaughter by the generals who became founders of Sunni islam. Shia are followers of Ali. Ali was the last heir to Mohammed's legacy, and he was killed in the great mosque of Kufa in Iraq. Consequently, Shia do not recognize any Kalifa (Caliph) as legitimate, because the last heir was murdered and heretics claimed the throne. So Shia are ruled by councils of Imams. This makes them prone to democracy. It may be a cultural reason for the cycle of harj-o-marj in Iran.
All of these governments benefit from the Palestinians being forged into a cannon-fodder army culture. Directed against Israel, with control maintained by systematically murdering all Palestinians that dissent or seek peace, the Palestinians are a PR tool. Their "oppression" allows the rulers of the Arab world to direct the disgruntlement of their own peoples against Israel and Jews. And this is not new at all.
This strategy of use of Jews as the bogeyman had its inception in economics, and the history of the islamic empires across the Middle East and Africa. The fundamental economic problem within islam is that muslims cannot be taxed. (The secondary problem is that interest could not be charged on loans.)
So after a region is conquered, and most people choose to convert, this leaves the dictator (Sultan or Caliph) with a big problem. The spoils of war will run out, and if you cannot continue to expand your empire, which has an endless need for new slaves, more gold and silver, and more land as spoils of war --- how are you going to fund your nation? The answer was found in the Jews --- that dedicated minority of Jews that refused to convert and survived.
The solution was to favor Jews as merchants (and money-lenders). Jews also became favored sometimes as advisers, and one Jew became a famous general, second only to the Sultan. Jews were safe, because they could not ascend to the throne. And those who got close to the throne depended upon the dictator for survival. So their loyalty was guaranteed.
By favoring Jews to be the biggest merchants the rulers could charge the Jews any amount of tax they wanted to. This acted like a VAT system. They also came to favor Jews as civil servants for the same reason that Jews could be trusted advisers and even military leaders. A side effect that was very desirable for the leadership was that this directed the anger at the extreme inequality in society at Jews rather than the ruler himself.
In Spain, Moors saw fit to do something very anti-islam. They made it illegal for Christians and Jews to convert to Islam without invitation. This was an economic decision. It allowed the Umayyads to collect taxes on the people of Spain at a level that supported their empire. Without this, the Umayyads probably would have fallen. In Spain, Jews were the civil servants, the faces that Christians saw. This directed the hatred of Spain's Christians against the Jews. And it also laid the foundations for the rebellion that took back Spain for Christianity. It laid the cultural foundation for the Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition was not just about hatred of Jews, although the cultural history helped make it work. The crown was in trouble, because although banking had been invented, reserves were gold and silver, and the money-multiplier of banking was at its limits. Confiscating the property of wealthy Jews shored up the finances of the Spanish economy. Spain also sent out desperate expeditions to get more gold, as most people know.
It's always interesting what information is selected from history for systematically passing along and what is glossed over or ignored completely. Which conversations are happening is far more important than what actually happened.
This is a nice article. I'm quite impressed by the historical analysis.
I totally agree with your last bullet: It's a moral must that Arabian countries grant citizenship for all their Palestinian residents. Importantly now, considering the Black Seventh, together with all rejected offers in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2020, etc, the Palestinians have no claim for any land from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea. Regarding your other two bullets, we can hopefully discuss them in person this June in NY :)
Palestinian communities allowed entry go to work to take over the nation that accepts them. They act as a separate ethnic group intent on domination, and do not integrate into the nation that accepts them. This is as true in Lebanon and Egypt as it was in Kuwait. The relations inside Jordan with Palestinians are uneasy.
This is visible in the United States Palestinian communities as well. They are the leaders of the anti-semitic hatred and calls to war in the USA.
Bottom line, there is little difference between the Palestinian's relationship to Israel and Palestinian's relationship to every other Arab nation.
There's almost no distinction of the Palestinians' relation with Israel, in comparing their relation with other Arabian nations??? Did they commit atrocities analogous with the Black Seventh on any other nation???
If you study war you will find so many horrible things. Most of them are never reported on, even huge events in modern times. Few people in the Euro-American news media stream are aware that during the Kosovo war---the largest land battle in global history took place. Largest number of tanks. Largest death toll in a single day. I challenge you to find out where that happened.
I suppose you may not think that WW2 was modern times. But the rape of Nanjing is beyond anything else. It makes Oct 7th seem like a tea party by comparison. It was as if Oct 7th continued for a couple of months with a large, mechanized army. Civilian deaths at least 200,000 and probably much higher. Rape and rape-murder was at least 20,000.
Yes, people forget. Everything is forgotten in time. And no people's hands are free of blood and bones in their history, just as none are free from slavery. Each generation springs anew, innocent of the awful past of their forebears. Some generations will be horrified and shocked at what humans are capable of doing.
Some commit horrors because their religion/ideology tells them to. Islam does this. Some commit horrors because of a belief in their ethnic superiority, looking down on those they slaughter as underpeople not fit to live. Some commit horrors for strategic advantage: "Shock and awe." (Shock and awe never works unless it causes near annihilation. But generation after generation of leaders come up with this sort of idea and think they thought of it first and that it is how to win.)
Yes, we must. And we must read such history through the lens of experiences like yours. The Lebanese civil war only happened because the Palestinians were taken into Lebanon. That war ended when the IDF cleaned them out of Lebanon, root and branch. This is what is required when dealing with Palestinians. They will always claim to be the victim, when they are the aggressor.
Remember that according to Hamas, they have always been at war with Israel, and the Oct 7th attack was, according to them, a retaliation for crimes against them. So reading that this is how they framed their massacre at Damour is hardly surprising. I can't imagine that you haven't noticed how the most mainstream media have framed the Oct 7th attack? Or how this was cheered on at Harvard and Yale? You haven't noticed how the IDF's war on Gaza has been reported as war crime, and on and on?
This is a very good and important article and makes points I also have made in my own writings. My own host father while an exchange student in northwestern West Germany in the 1980's had been one of those exiles forced to flee East Prussia to allow its annexation by Russia. There are 2 important points I would add to the article however.
1. After German reunification in 1990, the question of Germany's eastern border and claims for reclaiming Prussia and Silesia from Poland were in the minds of many in Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany as the more powerful country could easily have demanded Poland return some or all of these territories and sparked a war by doing so. Chancellor Kohl wisely did the opposite. He said that Germany accepts the judgement of history and finalized the eastern German border along the Oder River renouncing all German territorial claims in Poland despite these areas having been ethnically German for 1000 years or more. This insured peace in that part of Europe for Poles, Germans and Czechs.
2. Unlike the Germans who were expelled from Poland/East Prussia, the Palestinians were given a choice to have their own state alongside a Jewish Israel in 1948. They refused the offer of 94% of the territory in Israel and Jordan and attempted to massacre the Jews so they could have ALL the territory. They lost that war with Israel gaining its pre 1967 territory and Jordan and Egypt taking the West Bank regions of Judea and Samaria and Gaza respectively. They did NOT create a Palestinians state in those regions. Also, unlike the Germans of Prussia and Silesia, a significant part of the Palestinian population were actually recent Arab immigrants to the Levant who had come to the region from other Arab countries seeking employment in the areas reclaimed from desert by the Jews! Rather than seek to build a friendly state side by side with their neighbors, they sought full control by genocide. The Palestinians have not shown any change in policy in the last 75 years and all their respective "governments" have passed laws demanding that their state by Judenrein (Jew Free). Sadly, this accords with the Palestinian position during World War II when their leadership sided with Hitler and sought to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East.
Given these facts, it is fair to conclude that the Palestinians have demonstrated that they cannot have a state in peace alongside Israel and should be expelled from the region in the interests of peace for all in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria etc. The fact that even Arab states don't want the Palestinians says something about them and makes their future one of diaspora....at best.
I wholly agree with you on (1) and give huge credit to Kohl and German public opinion for that. Re (2), I agree with you on policy facts but draw different policy conclusions. I hope Part 2 will clarify.
This issue has been ongoing for 75 years without the Palestinians making any positive steps toward living in reality. At some point, you have to see the tumor for what it is and excise it to save the patient.
fair point. I greatly admired your brave, frank essay on Islamophobia. Fyi I don't deny a tumor, just not convinced that's the only cure. i look forward to your critique of Part 2.
I did not see a Part II yet. I think the world has erred in its response to the Palestinians from the beginning. By continually fighting them to a cease fire, but not taking great care to protect their civilians and then rebuilding the territory repeatedly, their population does not ever face the final consequences that comes when you lose a war and MUST adopt new policies. If the Allies had just fought the Nazi's back to Reich's borders in WWII, Germany would not have suddenly made peace...but would have rearmed and used nuclear weapons which it wanted to build to win the next war. The Palestinians have been given repeated chances at the cost of many innocent lives and the peace of entire countries. It is time to end that cycle by denying the Palestinians further chances. They sought a policy of all or nothing. It's time they got nothing and end the problem permanently.
It is very constructive to consider historical facts in judging political claims. What I would ask is what percentage of American or Canadian university students learn this history. In my own "social science" department, the Nakba is taught as the complete and sufficient truth. Is there any history taught today, or is it all grievance studies?
Good information, but you can't start history with the displaced Palestinians at the end of the 1948 war. The history of displaced Palestinians begins with the Zionist movement to colonize the territory Jews lost political control over more than two millennia ago and which hasn't be the center of the Jewish population since the second rebellion against Rome in the second century AD. Christians temporarily regained control of that land during the Crusades. when the Zionist movement, colonialism was a good thing, "the White Man's Burden" in the words of Rudyard Kipling. The US took control of the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American war. Though we may regret some or all of those actions today; they were certainly considered moral at the time. So was Zionism.
WWI and especial WWII ended the acceptability of colonialism and began the age of decolonialism. It also left the problem of providing a safe homeland for the Jews who had survived the Holocaust. By then, nearly a million Jews had sought sanctuary in Palestine. This made it easy for white Europeans (dying colonialists) to use the UN to take territory from the Palestinians to provide a homeland for the Jews they didn't want in Europe. They had the most votes in the new UN at the time.
The UN partition made Jerusalem and international city that was surrounded by territory dominated by Arabs. During the war, the Israelis did every possible to drive out the Arabs surrounding Jerusalem and other key positions, in some cases ethnically cleansing them. When Egypt, Syria and Jordan ask for a ceasefire after being mauled by the Israelis. these Arab nations ceded much territory to Israeli that he UN had granted to the Palestinians and kept the West Bank and Gaza for themselves. When they lost the 1967 war surrendered those territories to Israel in the cease, they became Israeli territory. When the Arab States decided the West Bank and Gaza should again belong to a Palestinian entity and denied any right to rule these territories, the Arabs living there technically and practically became stateless. Unlike the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the 1948 and became Israeli citizens, neither they nor Israeli nor any existing Arab State recognizes them as citizens of any existing country.
With this foundation in place, you can continue your history of the Nakba.
I take it you view the establishment of Israel as morally unjust, and fault my article for not expressing an opinion. How about the establishments of Soviet Kaliningrad and Pakistan? How about the displacement of 850 thousand Jews from Muslim-ruled Levant? Would you like to see any of these disestablished by force, and if so, which and why? As for the territorial cessions after, I partly agree with you and intend to address that in Part 2.
Kent: I don't view the establishment of Israel are morally unjust. I explicitly said that the "civilized" world including the US viewed colonialism as a good thing even after the the Zionist movement began sending Jews to Palestine (in the 1880s?) The US took control of a Philippines fully ready for self-rule and fought a bloody guerrilla war to gain control of the country. I refuse to apply present day moral standards to the Zionists who were "colonizing" (not exactly the right word) part of Palestine without the experience and wisdom mankind has gained from the past dozen decades, especially when America was doing the same thing at the same time. (Our interest in formal colonies quickly diminished and we promised Philippine independence in 1946 back in 1935.)
Most of the Jews who left Arab countries for Israel had been persecuted, but left VOLUNTARY. They were not displaced as a group by war. No one is asking European countries to compensate those jews who left Europe for Palestine before WWII or the USSR/Russia to compensate the jews (a million?) who have left since 1970.
Thanks for your clarification, but I don't fully understand it. By your claimed criterion, most of the displacements I mentioned were "VOLUNTARY". In fact, the least persecuted of the displaced groups were the Muslims in modern India and Israel, as evidenced by the millions who voluntarily remain. So how many of the people I categorized as "displaced" would you identify as "forced" (Palestinians in particular) and where did you obtain your evidence? Personally I tried to distinguish between "evicted", "fleeing in panic", and "retreating to return as re-conquerors" but quickly gave up -- too little data, too few clear distinctions. too many biased recollecionts, tooo much fog of war.
Kent wrote: "How about the displacement of 850 thousand Jews from Muslim-ruled Levant?"
How about the displacement of millions of Jews from Europe before and after WWII and the displacement of the Jews who have been fleeing Russia since it became legal in the 1970's? I don't see the Palestinian people as responsible for the displacement of Jews who fled individually from other Arab countries and therefore being expected to accept less in a "just" final settlement. If so, every country from which Jews have individually fled anti-Semitism owes a debt to the Jewish people. This is a standard many apply only to Muslim countries that you don't apply to European countries or Russia. It doesn't belong on any "balance sheet" of wrongs that should be addressed.
Frank, I am trying hard to understand your views, ask questions where I don't understand, and respond respectfully. Sadly, you are grossly caricaturing mine. i wrote nothing about Palestinian responsibility, the displaced-had-it-coming, just settlements, or balance sheets. Besides for my historical analysis (which you did not object to apart from wishing I had a longer timeline), the only claims I made are summarized at the end of my essay. Can you tell me please which you object to and why?
Kent: I criticized by excellent article, because it didn't start at the beginning; when the Zionist movement started to return large number of Jews to Palestine. I called that movement colonialism, but few recognized that colonialism was immoral at that time, including the US, which fought desperately to escape from the British Empire. While helping the Cubans to escape the grip of what was left of the Spanish Empire, we took over several Spanish colonies. I refuse to criticize the Zionists for doing things America also did. The Holocaust created a need for a safe homeland for the Jewish people.
By the end of WWII, the vast majority of the advanced countries no long accepted the morality of colonialism. One third of the people now living in Palestine were Jews and the British (and French) had returned to the new UN the Mandates they had been given by the League of Nations to govern areas of the former Ottoman Empire where Arabs dominated. The British had presided widely accepted local governments in many areas where one people dominated, but Palestine (with Jews and Palestinian Arabs already engaged in civil war), Lebanon (with Christians, and multiple Muslim sects competing for power) and the Kurds (the largest group to not rule a homeland) were problems that persist to this day (along with the British preference for monarchies). IMO, this fairly sets the stage for your history.
I objected (originally mildly) to your bringing the Jews who VOLUNTARILY fled Arab countries into an essay discussing those who have been displaced by war or whose lands had been lost (to Israel, Egypt and Jordan) in the 1947-8 war.
This seems more than slightly one-sided. And replete with grammatical errors and spelling errors, in addition. Were you upset when you wrote this?
There is not one square inch of territory on earth (with the possible exception of Antarctica) that has not changed hands over and over and over. Wars have consequences.
The group that you seem to be enamored with, has, at various times, threatened to exterminate me personally. I have heard this over and over and over from a wide variety of Muslims.
I am not Jewish, although there are some Jewish members of my family. This is just pure hatred of "the other", no matter what "the other" is, including other varieties of Muslims. I have heard many Shiites demand that all Sunnis be killed and many Sunnis demand that all Shiites be killed. I have heard many Sunnis and Shiites claim that all Sufis and followers of other minor sects of Islam should be killed.
In the face of this sort of nonsense, it is difficult to put much credence in anything coming out of the "Islamic World". Including your polemical argumentation in favor of Islamic supremacy.
Many bad things have happened, throughout human history. It is impossible to "right" all past wrongs. Why not just try to build a better future instead of worrying endlessly about what happened already?
This is very insightful -- thanks for this historic analysis. I knew the story of ethnic Germans in Russia, but was not familiar with the details of mass displacements caused by Pakistan and Bangladesh formation. I can also add mass displacements of Greek and Tatars, also in Soviet Russia and also accompanied by brutality and mass casualties. Comparing these recent displacements of peoples with Palestinians puts things in the perspective and highlights, once again, the double standard applied to Israel since its creation.
I covered only the three major displacements that happened around the same period and involved either Allied or Arab powers. But I appreciate your reference to Greek and Crimean Tatar displacements as they are relevant comparators too. I will mention them in Part 2 of this essay, which I hope to publish next month.
You left out the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Is it time to demand the right of return to Occupied Constantinople?
Dear Bill,
How about expanding your comment into an essay. I'd appreciate it!
thanks,
randy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey
I am reminded of a somewhat similar and less-fraught exchange of populations between the US and Canada. The United Empire Loyalists left the US for Canada after the American Revolution and helped spur the development of Canada. Over the years, Canada and the US have been on mainly friendly terms (except for that "contretemps" in 1812). Also, there has been a slow "brain drain" or "talent drain" from Canada to the US that has been going on for well over a century at this point.
My immigration lawyer in the 1980s wrote the textbook used in law schools about US immigration law. According to him, about one third of Canadians could get a US passport on demand, and well over half of all Canadians could get a US green card on demand, at that time.
I am not so sure this remains true currently, because in the last decade Canada has remade itself in a way so as to be almost unrecognizable, in many respects. If one trusts surveys and polls, the vast majority of Canadians are not very happy about this.
To connect this topic to STEM, I am going to bring up a subject that many are loathe to approach. I heard it from the Israeli ambassador to the US in a speech in Northern California.
If one looks at the Western World, a large fraction of those who do exceptionally well in STEM are Jewish. My own area of STEM is well over half Jewish. I have numerous Jewish colleagues. Of my Christian and atheist colleagues, a large fraction of them also discovered through genealogy that there is a "Jew in the woodpile"; i.e., they have some Jewish heritage or ancestry a few centuries in the past. I might also be in that category. I do not know. I am not that interested to dig around.
So who are those who are succeeding in STEM in Israel? One would expect that Israel would be a STEM powerhouse. And it does seem to be emerging as one.
However, who does best in STEM in Israeli schools and universities? A substantial fraction of those who perform exceptionally well in STEM in Israel are Christian and Muslim Arabs.
How do I explain this? I think it is because performance in STEM comes down to three things:
(1) brainpower
(2) creativity and imagination
(3) diligence
Anecdotally and through studies, diligence seems to be the most important, followed by creativity and imagination, and finally, intelligence. And who tries hardest in various countries and societies? Those who are on the bottom of the pile, like the South and East Asian communities in the US currently (and before them, the Jewish communities in the US). And the people at the bottom of the pile in Israel are not the Jews, but the Christians and Muslims and atheists and Arabs, etc. So, they try harder, and are more dedicated, and they do well.
So the nonJewish Israelis do much better in STEM than they would have done in the Arab lands around Israel. It is about culture and the atmosphere and the environment. Israel has created a culture and an environment where STEM talent can thrive, and it can flourish.
The Islamic world, before al Ghazali, used to be a place where STEM was nurtured. But since al Ghazai published his treatise "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", it has fallen into a dark age. And it still has not emerged from this dark age, about 1000 years later. STEM is not particularly appreciated in most Islamic cultures, unfortunately.
Israel is showing its neighbors that they can actually do STEM. It is a light, it is a beacon. And that is why so many are anxious to sign peace treaties with Israel and to emulate Israel.
If this succeeds, the world and all of humanity will reap the benefits.
Thank you for this reasonable and enlightening perspective.
Great comparisons. The question I’m left with is why did so many Arab governments refuse to integrate these Palestinians?
Two reasons:
First, as I said above, There is reason for Arab nations not accepting Palestinians. It is exemplified by the experience of Kuwait.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/07/04/kuwait-plans-palestinian-deportation/1bc9ad57-b493-44c6-bea6-677a294df405/
Palestinian communities allowed entry go to work to take over the nation that accepts them. They act as a separate ethnic group intent on domination, and do not integrate into the nation that accepts them. This is as true in Lebanon and Egypt as it was in Kuwait. The relations inside Jordan with Palestinians are uneasy.
This is visible in the United States Palestinian communities as well. They are the leaders of the anti-semitic hatred and calls to war in the USA. There is little difference between the Palestinian's relationship to Israel and Palestinian's relationship to every other Arab nation.
Second, the Palestinians have become a pawn, mostly a pawn of Iran, but also a pawn used by the rest of the Arab world. The Islamic world is mostly a world of dictatorship, whether the nation's leaders are called royalty or dictator or president. The two most democratic nations are Syria and Iran. However, Iran is not Arab, it is Persian, and Iran has a deep history of conquest. Iran is the only Shia nation in the world. Shia are the result of the Sunni-Shia schism after the death of Mohammed.
When Mohammed died, his top generals that surrounded him slaughtered every relative and favorite that Mohammed had in his life. The evidence suggests strongly that those men hated Mohammed, and did not believe in his war cult --- that they wanted to destroy it. But, after successfully taking over, they apparently decided to keep the machine of islam going for their own benefit.
Shia are the other side of that slaughter by the generals who became founders of Sunni islam. Shia are followers of Ali. Ali was the last heir to Mohammed's legacy, and he was killed in the great mosque of Kufa in Iraq. Consequently, Shia do not recognize any Kalifa (Caliph) as legitimate, because the last heir was murdered and heretics claimed the throne. So Shia are ruled by councils of Imams. This makes them prone to democracy. It may be a cultural reason for the cycle of harj-o-marj in Iran.
All of these governments benefit from the Palestinians being forged into a cannon-fodder army culture. Directed against Israel, with control maintained by systematically murdering all Palestinians that dissent or seek peace, the Palestinians are a PR tool. Their "oppression" allows the rulers of the Arab world to direct the disgruntlement of their own peoples against Israel and Jews. And this is not new at all.
This strategy of use of Jews as the bogeyman had its inception in economics, and the history of the islamic empires across the Middle East and Africa. The fundamental economic problem within islam is that muslims cannot be taxed. (The secondary problem is that interest could not be charged on loans.)
So after a region is conquered, and most people choose to convert, this leaves the dictator (Sultan or Caliph) with a big problem. The spoils of war will run out, and if you cannot continue to expand your empire, which has an endless need for new slaves, more gold and silver, and more land as spoils of war --- how are you going to fund your nation? The answer was found in the Jews --- that dedicated minority of Jews that refused to convert and survived.
The solution was to favor Jews as merchants (and money-lenders). Jews also became favored sometimes as advisers, and one Jew became a famous general, second only to the Sultan. Jews were safe, because they could not ascend to the throne. And those who got close to the throne depended upon the dictator for survival. So their loyalty was guaranteed.
By favoring Jews to be the biggest merchants the rulers could charge the Jews any amount of tax they wanted to. This acted like a VAT system. They also came to favor Jews as civil servants for the same reason that Jews could be trusted advisers and even military leaders. A side effect that was very desirable for the leadership was that this directed the anger at the extreme inequality in society at Jews rather than the ruler himself.
In Spain, Moors saw fit to do something very anti-islam. They made it illegal for Christians and Jews to convert to Islam without invitation. This was an economic decision. It allowed the Umayyads to collect taxes on the people of Spain at a level that supported their empire. Without this, the Umayyads probably would have fallen. In Spain, Jews were the civil servants, the faces that Christians saw. This directed the hatred of Spain's Christians against the Jews. And it also laid the foundations for the rebellion that took back Spain for Christianity. It laid the cultural foundation for the Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition was not just about hatred of Jews, although the cultural history helped make it work. The crown was in trouble, because although banking had been invented, reserves were gold and silver, and the money-multiplier of banking was at its limits. Confiscating the property of wealthy Jews shored up the finances of the Spanish economy. Spain also sent out desperate expeditions to get more gold, as most people know.
It's always interesting what information is selected from history for systematically passing along and what is glossed over or ignored completely. Which conversations are happening is far more important than what actually happened.
I knew some of this, but not in such detail. This is a superb and insightful analysis.
It does serve to highlight some of the worst of human nature, however.
This is a nice article. I'm quite impressed by the historical analysis.
I totally agree with your last bullet: It's a moral must that Arabian countries grant citizenship for all their Palestinian residents. Importantly now, considering the Black Seventh, together with all rejected offers in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2020, etc, the Palestinians have no claim for any land from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea. Regarding your other two bullets, we can hopefully discuss them in person this June in NY :)
There is reason for Arab nations not accepting Palestinians. It is exemplified by the experience of Kuwait.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/07/04/kuwait-plans-palestinian-deportation/1bc9ad57-b493-44c6-bea6-677a294df405/
Palestinian communities allowed entry go to work to take over the nation that accepts them. They act as a separate ethnic group intent on domination, and do not integrate into the nation that accepts them. This is as true in Lebanon and Egypt as it was in Kuwait. The relations inside Jordan with Palestinians are uneasy.
This is visible in the United States Palestinian communities as well. They are the leaders of the anti-semitic hatred and calls to war in the USA.
Bottom line, there is little difference between the Palestinian's relationship to Israel and Palestinian's relationship to every other Arab nation.
There's almost no distinction of the Palestinians' relation with Israel, in comparing their relation with other Arabian nations??? Did they commit atrocities analogous with the Black Seventh on any other nation???
We must restore Moral Clarity in our Society...
Please understand that I am not in any way minimizing Oct 7th.
In modern times, the sole incident that can be compared with the one on 7 Oct of 2023 in Israel is the one on 11 Sep of 2001 in America...
Unfortunately, many people are already forgetting the latter :(
If you study war you will find so many horrible things. Most of them are never reported on, even huge events in modern times. Few people in the Euro-American news media stream are aware that during the Kosovo war---the largest land battle in global history took place. Largest number of tanks. Largest death toll in a single day. I challenge you to find out where that happened.
I suppose you may not think that WW2 was modern times. But the rape of Nanjing is beyond anything else. It makes Oct 7th seem like a tea party by comparison. It was as if Oct 7th continued for a couple of months with a large, mechanized army. Civilian deaths at least 200,000 and probably much higher. Rape and rape-murder was at least 20,000.
Yes, people forget. Everything is forgotten in time. And no people's hands are free of blood and bones in their history, just as none are free from slavery. Each generation springs anew, innocent of the awful past of their forebears. Some generations will be horrified and shocked at what humans are capable of doing.
Some commit horrors because their religion/ideology tells them to. Islam does this. Some commit horrors because of a belief in their ethnic superiority, looking down on those they slaughter as underpeople not fit to live. Some commit horrors for strategic advantage: "Shock and awe." (Shock and awe never works unless it causes near annihilation. But generation after generation of leaders come up with this sort of idea and think they thought of it first and that it is how to win.)
Yes. Palestinians have committed worse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damour_massacre
Palestinians arguably started the Lebanese Civil War causing the majority of deaths totalling 150,000 or so.
Palestinians helped saddam hussein invade Kuwait. About 1,000 civilian Kuwaitis died. Similar number to Nova Festival.
As horrendous as it may be, a Retaliation during Wartime cannot be compared with a Massacre during Peacetime.
I again emphasize: We must restore Moral Clarity in our Society...
Yes, we must. And we must read such history through the lens of experiences like yours. The Lebanese civil war only happened because the Palestinians were taken into Lebanon. That war ended when the IDF cleaned them out of Lebanon, root and branch. This is what is required when dealing with Palestinians. They will always claim to be the victim, when they are the aggressor.
Remember that according to Hamas, they have always been at war with Israel, and the Oct 7th attack was, according to them, a retaliation for crimes against them. So reading that this is how they framed their massacre at Damour is hardly surprising. I can't imagine that you haven't noticed how the most mainstream media have framed the Oct 7th attack? Or how this was cheered on at Harvard and Yale? You haven't noticed how the IDF's war on Gaza has been reported as war crime, and on and on?
This is a very good and important article and makes points I also have made in my own writings. My own host father while an exchange student in northwestern West Germany in the 1980's had been one of those exiles forced to flee East Prussia to allow its annexation by Russia. There are 2 important points I would add to the article however.
1. After German reunification in 1990, the question of Germany's eastern border and claims for reclaiming Prussia and Silesia from Poland were in the minds of many in Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany as the more powerful country could easily have demanded Poland return some or all of these territories and sparked a war by doing so. Chancellor Kohl wisely did the opposite. He said that Germany accepts the judgement of history and finalized the eastern German border along the Oder River renouncing all German territorial claims in Poland despite these areas having been ethnically German for 1000 years or more. This insured peace in that part of Europe for Poles, Germans and Czechs.
2. Unlike the Germans who were expelled from Poland/East Prussia, the Palestinians were given a choice to have their own state alongside a Jewish Israel in 1948. They refused the offer of 94% of the territory in Israel and Jordan and attempted to massacre the Jews so they could have ALL the territory. They lost that war with Israel gaining its pre 1967 territory and Jordan and Egypt taking the West Bank regions of Judea and Samaria and Gaza respectively. They did NOT create a Palestinians state in those regions. Also, unlike the Germans of Prussia and Silesia, a significant part of the Palestinian population were actually recent Arab immigrants to the Levant who had come to the region from other Arab countries seeking employment in the areas reclaimed from desert by the Jews! Rather than seek to build a friendly state side by side with their neighbors, they sought full control by genocide. The Palestinians have not shown any change in policy in the last 75 years and all their respective "governments" have passed laws demanding that their state by Judenrein (Jew Free). Sadly, this accords with the Palestinian position during World War II when their leadership sided with Hitler and sought to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East.
Given these facts, it is fair to conclude that the Palestinians have demonstrated that they cannot have a state in peace alongside Israel and should be expelled from the region in the interests of peace for all in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria etc. The fact that even Arab states don't want the Palestinians says something about them and makes their future one of diaspora....at best.
I wholly agree with you on (1) and give huge credit to Kohl and German public opinion for that. Re (2), I agree with you on policy facts but draw different policy conclusions. I hope Part 2 will clarify.
This issue has been ongoing for 75 years without the Palestinians making any positive steps toward living in reality. At some point, you have to see the tumor for what it is and excise it to save the patient.
fair point. I greatly admired your brave, frank essay on Islamophobia. Fyi I don't deny a tumor, just not convinced that's the only cure. i look forward to your critique of Part 2.
I did not see a Part II yet. I think the world has erred in its response to the Palestinians from the beginning. By continually fighting them to a cease fire, but not taking great care to protect their civilians and then rebuilding the territory repeatedly, their population does not ever face the final consequences that comes when you lose a war and MUST adopt new policies. If the Allies had just fought the Nazi's back to Reich's borders in WWII, Germany would not have suddenly made peace...but would have rearmed and used nuclear weapons which it wanted to build to win the next war. The Palestinians have been given repeated chances at the cost of many innocent lives and the peace of entire countries. It is time to end that cycle by denying the Palestinians further chances. They sought a policy of all or nothing. It's time they got nothing and end the problem permanently.
It is very constructive to consider historical facts in judging political claims. What I would ask is what percentage of American or Canadian university students learn this history. In my own "social science" department, the Nakba is taught as the complete and sufficient truth. Is there any history taught today, or is it all grievance studies?
Good information, but you can't start history with the displaced Palestinians at the end of the 1948 war. The history of displaced Palestinians begins with the Zionist movement to colonize the territory Jews lost political control over more than two millennia ago and which hasn't be the center of the Jewish population since the second rebellion against Rome in the second century AD. Christians temporarily regained control of that land during the Crusades. when the Zionist movement, colonialism was a good thing, "the White Man's Burden" in the words of Rudyard Kipling. The US took control of the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American war. Though we may regret some or all of those actions today; they were certainly considered moral at the time. So was Zionism.
WWI and especial WWII ended the acceptability of colonialism and began the age of decolonialism. It also left the problem of providing a safe homeland for the Jews who had survived the Holocaust. By then, nearly a million Jews had sought sanctuary in Palestine. This made it easy for white Europeans (dying colonialists) to use the UN to take territory from the Palestinians to provide a homeland for the Jews they didn't want in Europe. They had the most votes in the new UN at the time.
The UN partition made Jerusalem and international city that was surrounded by territory dominated by Arabs. During the war, the Israelis did every possible to drive out the Arabs surrounding Jerusalem and other key positions, in some cases ethnically cleansing them. When Egypt, Syria and Jordan ask for a ceasefire after being mauled by the Israelis. these Arab nations ceded much territory to Israeli that he UN had granted to the Palestinians and kept the West Bank and Gaza for themselves. When they lost the 1967 war surrendered those territories to Israel in the cease, they became Israeli territory. When the Arab States decided the West Bank and Gaza should again belong to a Palestinian entity and denied any right to rule these territories, the Arabs living there technically and practically became stateless. Unlike the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the 1948 and became Israeli citizens, neither they nor Israeli nor any existing Arab State recognizes them as citizens of any existing country.
With this foundation in place, you can continue your history of the Nakba.
I take it you view the establishment of Israel as morally unjust, and fault my article for not expressing an opinion. How about the establishments of Soviet Kaliningrad and Pakistan? How about the displacement of 850 thousand Jews from Muslim-ruled Levant? Would you like to see any of these disestablished by force, and if so, which and why? As for the territorial cessions after, I partly agree with you and intend to address that in Part 2.
Kent: I don't view the establishment of Israel are morally unjust. I explicitly said that the "civilized" world including the US viewed colonialism as a good thing even after the the Zionist movement began sending Jews to Palestine (in the 1880s?) The US took control of a Philippines fully ready for self-rule and fought a bloody guerrilla war to gain control of the country. I refuse to apply present day moral standards to the Zionists who were "colonizing" (not exactly the right word) part of Palestine without the experience and wisdom mankind has gained from the past dozen decades, especially when America was doing the same thing at the same time. (Our interest in formal colonies quickly diminished and we promised Philippine independence in 1946 back in 1935.)
Most of the Jews who left Arab countries for Israel had been persecuted, but left VOLUNTARY. They were not displaced as a group by war. No one is asking European countries to compensate those jews who left Europe for Palestine before WWII or the USSR/Russia to compensate the jews (a million?) who have left since 1970.
Thanks for your clarification, but I don't fully understand it. By your claimed criterion, most of the displacements I mentioned were "VOLUNTARY". In fact, the least persecuted of the displaced groups were the Muslims in modern India and Israel, as evidenced by the millions who voluntarily remain. So how many of the people I categorized as "displaced" would you identify as "forced" (Palestinians in particular) and where did you obtain your evidence? Personally I tried to distinguish between "evicted", "fleeing in panic", and "retreating to return as re-conquerors" but quickly gave up -- too little data, too few clear distinctions. too many biased recollecionts, tooo much fog of war.
Kent wrote: "How about the displacement of 850 thousand Jews from Muslim-ruled Levant?"
How about the displacement of millions of Jews from Europe before and after WWII and the displacement of the Jews who have been fleeing Russia since it became legal in the 1970's? I don't see the Palestinian people as responsible for the displacement of Jews who fled individually from other Arab countries and therefore being expected to accept less in a "just" final settlement. If so, every country from which Jews have individually fled anti-Semitism owes a debt to the Jewish people. This is a standard many apply only to Muslim countries that you don't apply to European countries or Russia. It doesn't belong on any "balance sheet" of wrongs that should be addressed.
Frank, I am trying hard to understand your views, ask questions where I don't understand, and respond respectfully. Sadly, you are grossly caricaturing mine. i wrote nothing about Palestinian responsibility, the displaced-had-it-coming, just settlements, or balance sheets. Besides for my historical analysis (which you did not object to apart from wishing I had a longer timeline), the only claims I made are summarized at the end of my essay. Can you tell me please which you object to and why?
Kent: I criticized by excellent article, because it didn't start at the beginning; when the Zionist movement started to return large number of Jews to Palestine. I called that movement colonialism, but few recognized that colonialism was immoral at that time, including the US, which fought desperately to escape from the British Empire. While helping the Cubans to escape the grip of what was left of the Spanish Empire, we took over several Spanish colonies. I refuse to criticize the Zionists for doing things America also did. The Holocaust created a need for a safe homeland for the Jewish people.
By the end of WWII, the vast majority of the advanced countries no long accepted the morality of colonialism. One third of the people now living in Palestine were Jews and the British (and French) had returned to the new UN the Mandates they had been given by the League of Nations to govern areas of the former Ottoman Empire where Arabs dominated. The British had presided widely accepted local governments in many areas where one people dominated, but Palestine (with Jews and Palestinian Arabs already engaged in civil war), Lebanon (with Christians, and multiple Muslim sects competing for power) and the Kurds (the largest group to not rule a homeland) were problems that persist to this day (along with the British preference for monarchies). IMO, this fairly sets the stage for your history.
I objected (originally mildly) to your bringing the Jews who VOLUNTARILY fled Arab countries into an essay discussing those who have been displaced by war or whose lands had been lost (to Israel, Egypt and Jordan) in the 1947-8 war.
This seems more than slightly one-sided. And replete with grammatical errors and spelling errors, in addition. Were you upset when you wrote this?
There is not one square inch of territory on earth (with the possible exception of Antarctica) that has not changed hands over and over and over. Wars have consequences.
The group that you seem to be enamored with, has, at various times, threatened to exterminate me personally. I have heard this over and over and over from a wide variety of Muslims.
I am not Jewish, although there are some Jewish members of my family. This is just pure hatred of "the other", no matter what "the other" is, including other varieties of Muslims. I have heard many Shiites demand that all Sunnis be killed and many Sunnis demand that all Shiites be killed. I have heard many Sunnis and Shiites claim that all Sufis and followers of other minor sects of Islam should be killed.
In the face of this sort of nonsense, it is difficult to put much credence in anything coming out of the "Islamic World". Including your polemical argumentation in favor of Islamic supremacy.
Many bad things have happened, throughout human history. It is impossible to "right" all past wrongs. Why not just try to build a better future instead of worrying endlessly about what happened already?