Did you see this? Jeffrey Goldberg picking up Israel lobbyist Robert Satloff, who is deeply offended that the Nakba might be considered to rank with other tragedies in history. In fact, the U.N.’s John Ging made no statement of moral equivalence of the Nakba as a "stain" on history to the Holocaust, but Satloff/Goldberg’s title is: Satloff: U.N. Equates the "Nakba" to the Holocaust. Nakba is in quotes because for fanatical Zionists it isn’t a tragedy.
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His point is that the nakba is forced relocation at worst (and often not that), while the other examples cited are at a scale of actual genocide, actual active mass murder.
That isn’t his point. Your point is partly wrong anyway. The Nakba was forced relocation urged on by a couple of dozen massacres documented in the Israeli historical record by Benny Morris. There might be others. The killing is not on the scale of some worse atrocities, but there is mass killing engaged in for a purpose–to terrify hundreds of thosuands of people into leaving their homes permanently. It’s a crime against humanity, comparable to many others and all the more interesting because so many “civilized” Western liberals either denied it for decades or say it was justified. That makes it well worth study in any book or history class devoted to the study of crimes against humanity.
Anyway, his actual point was this–
“it takes a remarkable degree of historical revisionism for a United Nations official to include the creation of Israel — for that is what the Nakba represents –on a list of “blights and stains on human history.” ”
Even your description was more truthful than this, because he doesn’t acknowledge any tragedy at all. It is ironic though–a defender of Israel saying that the Nakba represents the creation of Israel. He’s right about that and it is another demonstration of the amazing blindness that ideology can cause in a person. He’s condemned Israel’s founding with his own words and he doesn’t even know it.
His point is that the nakba is forced relocation at worst (and often not that)…
You know, Witty, the Holocaust wasn’t gas ovens and crematoriums from the get go. It started with mere “forced relocations,” as you euphemistically call them.
Wrong Richard,
Nakdba is forced relocation made possible by prior massacres of civilians, who were driven out for fear of death.
That is called terrorism.
Why so much anonymous authorship? This is not that contreversial a comment?
See, you’re lucky, Wittty. You’ve never had anyone try to destroy your reputation or put you on a blacklist, have you?
goldberg forgot to put the copyright symbol next to the world holocaust . it should read:
Satloff: U.N. Equates the “Nakba” to the Holocaust©:
I prefer Holocau$t.
I don’t think that the shameless misuse of the memory of Holocaust victims by extremist Zionists to justify contemporary war crimes makes it ok for others to be disrespectful. Perhaps I am overreacting because I’m not certain exactly what you guys are trying to convey, but I think effort in choice of words is warranted to prevent misunderstandings. Do you want to be seen, especially inadvertently, as being as disrespectful of the dead as they are?
Satloff: U.N. Equates the “Nakba” to the Holocaust©
Just another case in the files of smothering the moral voice of others who have suffered with the Holocaust Hegemony.
First of all, Ging put the Nakba on his list of “globally accepted facts,”, including that “the earth goes round the sun.” But I guess if Satloff is desperately looking for things to be worried about, his imagination is quite capable of inventing them.
Far more importantly, why is Ging deciding what Palestinian children study, and who gets to review Israeli school curricula? Most peoples of the world get to decide on their own children’s education, and sometimes bad judgment is exercised. Isn’t this situation fundamentally unfair? Should Palestinian schoolchildren learn that that Jews were entitled to their land as compensation for the Holocaust, or just that the Holocaust, like the Reign of Terror and Rwanda genocide, happened? And should we go looking in Israeli textbooks for an accurate and complete portrayal of the Nakba?
In fact, should we see what Israeli textbooks say about the Holocaust? Do they include a full narrative of Wallenberg’s heroism but nothing about Bernadotte, like virtually all Holocaust museums? Bernadotte, like Wallenberg, was a Swede who risked his life to save tens of thousands from Nazi depravity, but because he was assassinated by Israeli Jews, it has become practically taboo to publicize his heroism. Perhaps Ging should weigh in on this question. Oh, that’s right, the Israelis are not refugees, so they get to decide what their own children study. If they want to ignore Bernadotte, they can.
As for the Holocaust and Nakba, the events clearly are not even remotely comparable. But in a very important way, Nakba denial is far worse than Holocaust denial. The latter is almost universally condemned, and diminishes the role the denier plays in public discourse. In fact, there are numerous instances of false accusations of Holocaust denial designed for precisely that reason, to smear the Israeli critic as a denier whose opinions should be dismissed summarily. There is no reasonable danger that Holocaust denial will catch on, or that deniers will be treated seriously by those who wield power in this world. It’s offensive, even highly so, but not dangerous.
Nakba denial, on the other hand, is mainstream. No one in Congress would suffer the slightest consequence of denying that the creation of Israel caused a catastrophe among the Palestinian people. In fact, recognizing the Nakba requires actual courage, as it inevitably would invite smears and accusations of anti-Semitism.
Furthermore, the Nakba is ongoing. The Holocaust ended more than 60 years ago, and terrible as it was, the good guys won. Palestinians, on the other hand, are still suffering greatly, dispossessed of their lands in 1948 and of any semblance of freedom since 1967.
For Satloff and Goldberg to complain about the implications of Ging’s interview is just another day in Bizarro World.
The Palestinians were treated much worse under Jordan and Egyptian occupation.
Really? And how many thousands of homes were demolished under those occupations? How many villages razed? How often were Palestinians — teenagers especially — thrown into prison camps indefinitely on “administrative detention?” How many mosques, hospitals and schools did Jordan or Egypt raze? How many hundreds of Palestinian children died from bullets, or bombs, or white phosphorous?
Ah, more tired old hasbara lines. Jordan gave all Palestinians in the West Bank full citizenship rights. Egypt was more harsh towards those living in Gaza, but neither country stole Palestinian land for the use of their own citizens. Jordan was a poor country and had to absorb thousands of refugees without any compensation. (As opposed to Israel, which used the confiscated Palestinian property and businesses as well as reparation payments from Germany to support the influx of olim. ) Despite this, the standard of living in the West Bank and Gaza is lower than it was during Jordanian and Egyptian rule. You haven’t ever been to the West Bank, have you? You just repeat propaganda points as if they excuse the horrible conditions that Israel has imposed on the Occupied Territories for over 40 years. The Israeli occupation has been belligerent and in violation of the Geneva Conventions for decades. Even if you truly believed the crap you wrote, it does not excuse what Israel has done.
Does Jordan or Egypt get a big blank welfare check from the USA annually? Oh, yeah, Egypt does–in fact only second in amount after Israel, but Egypt has a big string attached, to wit keep blowing Israel. Jordan, same string. yonira, get real, you are talking to US taxpayers here.
David’s point that the nakba is ongoing is important.
Enough is enough.
That’s going to require that people like you stand up against Israeli aggression and apartheid, Witty.
You wouldn’t recognize my stand. You’d think that it was hasbara because I said it.
Hey Phil, if Chris Moore of Judeofascism.com, didn’t have a website called Judeofascism.com – would you have banned him?
What if he tried to trivialize the Holocaust? Not the exploitation of the Holocaust but the actual Holocaust.
This is what your friend, Witty is doing to the Nakba.
‘Forced relocation at worst [best]‘? This man is a fascist and a damn liar. You continue to let the most repulsive racism and bigotry towards Arabs and Muslims be espoused here by the Zionist circus (Witty, carnas, yonira, Michael L., Julian, OhioJoes) but you will ban people like Moore?
I’m compelled to side with Cliff here. Not that I want to see Witty banned, as onerous and despicable as I find him, but frankly Cliff raises a valid point about being equivocal. Personally, I think the site mods need to at least confront Witty on it.
Dear Chaos, that’s the genius of Witty, he won’t be confronted. He only tries to deflect criticism of Zionism = Israel = Jews. Best to ignore him, or poke at him. He has never answered any direct question I have put to him over a period of a couple of yrs.
There is no comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba. A better comparison would be between the Palestinian Exodus from Israel and Jewish expulsion from Arab countries following Israel’s creation. There were more Jews expelled from Arab countries than there were Palestinians from Israel.
Not only did Arab countries expel Jews, they also clearly obstructed and possibility of a solution to the refugee problem. The Lausanne Conference of 1949 is a perfect example of Arab culpability along w/ the assassination of King Hussein, by a Palestinian, following discussions of Jordanian recognition of Israel.
I am also not convinced that the Arab leadership wasn’t at least partially responsible for the Exodus of Palestinians.
“There were more Jews expelled from Arab countries than there were Palestinians from Israel.”
That’s an outright lie — half of Palestine’s native population was displaced in the Nakba. More to the point, you ignore both the fact that Arab Jews were paid to emigrate to Israel (often with land stolen from Palestinians expelled) and false flag attacks by Zionist terrorists intended to panic Jews elsewhere in the Middle East.
“I am also not convinced that the Arab leadership wasn’t at least partially responsible for the Exodus of Palestinians. “
That’s funny. One of the notable tacks of Holocaust deniers is to blame Jews themselves for the Holocaust, too. In trying to highlight the differences… ironically, you’re demonstrating some intriguing similarities.
In 1945, there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jew living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,600. In some Arab states, such as Libya, which was about 3% Jewish, the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain.
You didn’t answer the question I posed. You say those Jews were expelled. Really? How much time did they spend in refugee camps? Under whose militaries was it done at gunpoint, as happened to the Palestinians?
There are at least 20,000 Jews in Iran alone — not an Arab country, granted but still rather demonstrative that the numbers you are playing with don’t have much scholarship behind them.
The case of the Iraqi Jews is well studied and can be used as an example and rebuttal to yonira’s screed.
The Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. The Jews of Iraq (for example) were not.
Jews were aided in their escape from Arab countries by their fellow Jews. Where Palestinians were hendered by Arab communities every step of the way.
Translation: Jews were paid to abandon Middle Eastern countries, whereas Palestinians only did it at gunpoint.
People who are expelled don’t need help “escaping”. So I take it that you have abandoned your lie that Arab Jews were “expelled”? Or do you want to have it both ways, as many Zionists do. On second thought, many Zionists want it 3 opposing ways. Jews everywhere longed to return to Israel, but Arab Jews needed to be expelled first before discovering this longing, and they had trouble getting expelled in a timely fashion, so they had to rely on their fellow Jews to help them escape to Israel. That about covers it doesn’t it? Does any of that really make any logical sense? Or is it purely an emotional argument, meant to bypass reason?
“I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that,
to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions
rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called “cruel Zionism.” I write about it because I was part of it.”
link to inminds.co.uk
And this, too, was the outcome of the creation of Israel and the Nakba. Jewish communities worldwide destroyed, their people put on airplanes and dropped down into DP camps to serve the Zionist elite as labor, beautiful synagogues hundreds of years old left to fall into ruins.
None of this would have happened except for the creation of Israel. The entire world of Mizrahi Jewery was sacrificed on the altar of Zionism.
I’ve already quoted it once today, but certain particular words of one David Ben-Gurion are particularly emblematic of Zionism:
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
Another statement out of context, to the point of being misleading.
How surprising.
You are of course ignorant to the fact that Ben Gurion sought a bi-national state (of course turned down by the leading Arabs), until he concluded that reconciliation would be impossible.
Remind me again why the Arabs should have allowed a bunch of white European settlers to snap up a bunch of their land and make their own nation? If Zionists were true proponents of democracy, why not simply make everyone in Palestine citizens with an equal vote? Why did the Zionists require that land be made exclusive to Jews — why did their nation require ethnic cleansing to exist? The Palestinians never asked for anything like that — they were a hererogeneous mix of Muslims, Christians and Jews, after all.
I’m coming to move into your bedroom, Witty.
You have a choice – either we share the bed, or we cut it in half a put up a screen between us. Oh, and I snore.
In 1947, Benny Morris and Illan Pappe write, Jews owned less than 10% of the land of Palestine.
The partition plan – had it been accepted by Palestinian Arabs – would have resulted in more than 55% of Palestine being lost to the newly established Jewish state.
In essence, the partition plan was a a legalized form of land theft. Just because the UN, the US and Britain at the time supported such a plan, doesn’t make it morally acceptable or just.
Nolan,
Of the 100%, the majority was unclaimed public land.
The 7% figure is misleading.
“Unclaimed public land” my ass. Not the whole “land without a people canard.” Seriously?
Not true, The vast majority was private Arab lands. From the September 3rd, 1947 report to the UN General Assembly by the UN Special Committee on Palestine, paragraph 164 of their appraisal:
Source
Here is a map copiled from the British Mandate government’s “Village Statistics” monograph of 1945, listing the percentages of ownership by subdistricts in Palestine . It makes clear that most land was private land. It does show a category for public land but, as it points out, not all “public land” was state land.
Bedouin land in the Negev fell under this category, as the land was held communally under a usufructary system. The British Mandate government acknowledged during their control as “state’ agent that the Negev lands were held by the Bedouins, and were not considered State land. Also, numerous villages held title to the lands around their villages in a communal fashion. This land was likewise not State Land. But even if you expand and abuse the meaning of public lands to equate it to “state” land, still, the majority of land in Palestine prior to the Nakba was private Arab land.
The British Mandate government estimated the size of “state domain” to be approximately 4% of Mandate Palestine.
You are being way too generous, potsherd. A much better arrangement would be to banish Richard from his house. You can allow Mrs Witty to stay, as long as she’s willing to sleep on the floor and acknowledge that the house is really YOURS and she is merely a potential fifth columnist that you have graciously allowed to stay in your home as long as she doesn’t complain. Witty can go next door and live with the neighbors and if the neighbors won’t take him in, then its really not your fault that his neighbors are such horrible and uncaring people that they won’t take in a refugee. You, in the meantime, can invite some of your cousins to come live in Witty’s other bedrooms, thus showing everyone what a kind and caring soul you are. Of course, Witty should not ever be allowed to return to his house. After all, “shit happens” and he just has to learn to move on.
Correction Richard,
Ben Gurion said that Israel would superficilaly agree to a binational state under the UN Partition, but would not allow itself to be bound or limited by it. In other words, the Israeli founders played the UN to gain legitimacy, with an agenda to diregarding it.
The Palestiniasn had already been promised independence, which is why they fought on the side of the allies.
And no Richard, Jews only owned 7% of the land at the time, which is why the Nakba was necessary. Without the Nakba, Israel would never have come into existence as Jewish state.
Tree,
Where in the report was you “land ownership citation”.
Did you get that you contradicted yourself in stating that the majority of land was public land, but that Arabs “remained in possession of 85% of the land”.
Are the terms used in the same context or usages, or different?
Witty, even if most of the land was “public land” that still means the Zionists stole that land from the people of Palestine. You aren’t winning this argument even if the numbers are on your side, and they aren’t.
Richard wrote–
“Tree,
Where in the report was you “land ownership citation”.
Did you get that you contradicted yourself in stating that the majority of land was public land, but that Arabs “remained in possession of 85% of the land”.
Are the terms used in the same context or usages, or different”
Where did tree say that the majority of the land was public? He says the opposite.
Its only possible to discuss if Tree defines where in the 60 page report, the specific citation is, so we can evaluate it in context.
Maybe I’m wrong in that specific understanding of land ownership in 1946. Maybe not.
“Maybe I’m wrong…”
Gee, well, that’s a start, I suppose.
You realize that this argument destroys the entire basis of Zionism by assuming that the only reason a Jew would move to Israel is that he or she was kicked out of another country?
To this day, Israel uses the “unclaimed public land” excuse so as to confiscate thousands of acres from Palestinian towns and villages in Israel.
And nowhere in my post did I mention 7%. Witty is starting to see things that aren’t there.
Chaos4700 October 11, 2009 at 11:30 am
You know, Witty, the Holocaust wasn’t gas ovens and crematoriums from the get go. It started with mere “forced relocations,” as you euphemistically call them.
As Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight noted about the Berlin Holocaust Memorial – oh wait it’s actually called The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe link to article here … there is effectively a “hierarchy of suffering” with Jews at the top and the disabled, gypsies, homosexuals, Catholics, political enemies and everybody else way down the list. This exceptionalism debases the claims to suffering. Of course the Nabka is no less a holocaust of ethnic cleansing than were the Nazi concentration camps.
Human suffering is human suffering and by last count I understood that around 12 million human lives were stolen in Nazi concentration camps and that many claim that 6 million of those were Jewish lives. No other group has made and industry out of it, however.
Just in the last 20 years there have been several holocausts: 0ver 8 million Congolese dead, over 1.5 million in the Rwanda conflict, over 1 million in Darfur by some estimates, hundreds of thousands in the Balkans, and by some estimates the US-led sanctions on Iraq and subsequent wars have claimed over 1 million Iraqi lives (most civilian).
Israel and zionists don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the ethnic cleansing by their mafia and terrorist armies when Israel was founded. Their endless Orwellian blame the victim and repeat repeat repeat to make it an accepted reality simply doesn’t work.
There will be an accounting and those that deny the truth will come out the losers.
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