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The HogueProphecy Bulletin
The Fate of HAMAS: Part 2
The Marriage of Victims and Victimizers
Friends
The pounding of Hamas government buildings, rocket armories and weapon caches by the Israeli air force is in its fifth day. Hamas keeps firing salvos of rockets at Israeli towns, though they are less in number, the larger rocket artillery has been rolled out and Israeli civilians as far away as 40 kilometers from Gaza are within firing range. Around a half-dozen Israeli citizens have been killed. The Palestinian death toll is far greater, in part because Hamas has hidden their weapon arsenals and military assets in the densest populated urban centers. No doubt, death will claim more than 400 victims by end of the first day of 2009 in the so-called “holy” land.
Worldwide mass demonstrations, especially from Arab populations, condemning Israel has been surprisingly swift and well organized. Even the mainstream US television media outlets usually biased in favor of Israeli actions pour out their sentimentality in these emotive times to the Palestinian victims of overwhelming Israeli air strikes in violence not seen in Gaza since the Six Day War of June 1967. At that time the Gaza Strip enclave of refugee camps-cum-crowded Palestinian ghettos became Israel’s burden to oversee when the soldiers of David and Solomon routed an invasion attempt by the Egyptians.
It is easy to feel sympathy for victims of air strikes. It is a predictable and even programmed response to sympathize with, and somehow ennoble, the role of the victim.
I’m going to say some things in the blog that are sure to shock and upset some of you. I do this in the spirit of compassion. I must do this because I too have all the faults and habitually programmed wounds of my brothers and sister human beings inside me. I have learned from direct experience that sometimes the scab of illusion must be cut hard to open deep wounds to the healing air.
My blog is dedicated not only to commenting on current events reflected in prophecy but it also stands as my testimony of experiences since my initiation into meditation in 1980. I aim to help readers understand and try to transcend what makes all of us human beings so “predictable” and therefore doomed to repeat the past and call it “the future.”
I propose that intelligent and loving solutions exist only in the clarity of living in the eternity of the present. By facing and understanding the mechanics of our predictable habits, we can see how these are unconsciously infected into us like a germ through mis-education of each new generation. Prophecy is mostly doom laden and functions because we are made to make our children as predictable as we have been. We mostly are trained to do this accidentally and unconsciously. Thus, the world muddles on from one misery to the next. This web blog is one small effort in the enlightening of people about this syndrome so that it might help people break free from a state of habitual behavior passed on by one miserable generation to the next. I call that syndrome The Antichrist Unconscious.
I propose to you, reader, that victims are equally responsible for a crime against humanity as are the victimizers. Neither is to be praised or vilified. Both sides of the same dysfunctional coin need to be understood. Understanding will bring transformation.
Because modern journalism is more “opinionism” than at any time before, and emotion sells advertisement, it is all too easy to forget what caused this current crisis in Gaza. Both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian battle of cousin brother descendants of the great Semite patriarch Abraham have fallen into a deep and unconscious mass-psychotic state wherein both sides play victim and victimizer. I will eventually write an entire book on this matter and for now, as I am deeply involved in finishing my newest digital book “Predictions for 2009″ can only give you a morsel, a falafel for thought on this complicated Middle Eastern mess. Very briefly, here’s the outline of this Semite marriage of victims and victimizers made in hell:
In 1947-48, the British overlords relinquishing their hold on Palestine and along with the United Nations, without much forethought or respect for the views of Jews and Arabs living in Palestine, partitioned the place into Jewish and Palestinian enclaves.
Once handed the mess, the Palestinians and fellow neighboring Arab tribes and countries chose a path to war rather than peaceful resolution with their Jewish neighbors in 1948. They tried to push the Jews into the sea and they lost the war.
Both sides had committed atrocities but a majority of Palestinians chose to become refugees. Upwards of 700,000 were scattered in their own Diaspora.¬¨‚Ć They set up crowded refugee camps in Lebanon, in the Egyptian held Gaza Strip and camps mostly in the West Bank region governed by Jordan. A few hundred thousand Palestinians decided it was better to risk staying on their land, face their fears and face a future as citizens of the new Jewish state. There were no massacres waiting for those who didn’t run away. These Palestinians chose not to be victims, even if they risked persecution and death doing it.
The state of Israel would have been a very different place if most of the Palestinians had risked staying  as a sizable minority at nearly  a parity in number with the Jews. Owning land is empowerment in the Middle East. All rationalizations aside, when a land owner becomes a refugee he has chosen disenfranchisement.  Choose the path of a refugee and you choose the life of a victim.
Palestinians may have faced persecution and even atrocities if they had remained, but then again, there is political power in numbers, even under tyranny and with time the situation can improve. Take for instance South Africa. The whites in the end had to come to some understanding with the black majority and share their country. If most of the Palestinians had not abandoned their lands they would have enjoyed a near equal ratio of Arabs to Jewish citizens in Israel. If there had been a chance for a “two peoples one state” solution that was it.¬¨‚Ć If most of the Palestinians had stood their ground the Jews at that time would not have had the power to force them off their lands for they barely won the war. A large and integrated Arab population would have compelled the founders of Israel to find some workable solution towards living together. Indeed proof of such an equitable solution is self-evident when one considers the treatment of Arabs who stayed on to become Israeli citizens. It’s not a perfect fit, but Arab Israelis do not live in the squalor of the camps, in hopelessness, in a climate rife with radicalization. This is the bitter legacy left to future generations by¬¨‚Ć those who choose the path of flight after fight in 1948.
An Arab rush to war created the state of Israel, rather than that of two peoples trying to live within one state that was once Palestine. Like it or not, the world rushed to a solution without consulting the parties and it is too late to return the clock to 1947-48. Because of the UN decision, the nations of the world are burdened with the karma of troubles from the Middle East as well. This problem in Palestine is the world’s problem. We are all in some way obligated to find a Palestinian-Jewish solution otherwise our sons and daughters will continue to be drawn into wars there. Perhaps even Armageddon.
The Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular keep choosing a path of militancy after 1948 that only magnifies defeat and victimization. Again in 1967, leagues of Arab armies threatened to push the Jews into the sea and they lost. Israel as a consequence expanded its territories to include large populations of the dispossessed Palestinians from 1948 living in what became the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Victory now turned the Jews of Israel into victims and victimizers. Even to this day the sons and daughters of concentration camp survivors guard against and frequently re-occupy  the vast concentration camps of Palestinian refugees they won in battle.
After 1967, it became the Jewish Israelis’ turn to play victim, because the occupation of further¬¨‚Ć territories to give them breathing space from their enemies brought them the burden of occupation.¬¨‚Ć Conquest brought decades of terror in its wake from Palestinian guerrilla movements.
If there are rockets falling by the hundreds from Gaza, victimizing Jews in Israel it is because the Israeli Jews are in part responsible for the lethal rain. Occupation of peoples and lands has not brought more security as it was hoped in 1967, only more war. Only a new war for Issac’s sons and daughters of the Mogen David now amassing as I write this for a ground invasion into Gaza.
Right now, the sons and daughters of Ishmael, under Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip are earning far more sympathy as “victims” of an overwhelming retaliation of Israeli military might. These people may soon see Israeli tanks in their ruined streets and suffer being in the crossfire of an Arab-Israeli version of the Battle of Stalingrad.
It may sound cruel to say it. The truth is cruel to our illusions. The Palestinians of Gaza have brought this misery upon themselves.
It is about time someone stated a fact mostly overlooked by the media in these initially shocking days of the newest Arab-Israeli conflict: Arab leadership in the form of radical Hamas once again has chosen war over negotiation and the people of Gaza are now suffering for it. The long held cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was clearly broken by Hamas, not with one but 350 rockets launched at Israeli towns before the first Israeli jet responded. And once again, the Arabs miscalculate how complete and vigorous Israel’s military response can be. The war ending 2008 is 1948, is 1967 all over again.
There are certainly crimes committed by Arab and Jewish cousin brothers that could paint this blog black with righteous grievances; however, the unconscious habit of Palestinians to go to war with Jews just doesn’t work to their better interests. The Arab Palestinians collectively as a people have adopted political impotency as a habit. Just look at who they choose to lead them. They get our sympathies but they only dig more graves for their future and for peace. The jihadists of Hamas have¬¨‚Ć made their babies human shields putting their armaments, rocket factories and training camps in the densest populated areas. Who chose Hamas to rule over these poor Palestinian bystanders?
Back in elections held in 2007, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian government. A vast majority of Palestinians currently being bombed had voted Hamas into power because for all their faults, the theocratic zealots of Hamas promised and “did” run Gaza better than the more secularized and corrupt Fatah Palestinian Party of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Still, the price of voting for Hamas is now being paid in Israeli air strikes, hundreds killed, thousands injured and a ground invasion of Gaza imminent.
The vote for Hamas was a vote for further victimization. The Palestinians of Gaza chose a government that openly declares war as its chief policy against a country it doesn’t recognize. As long as Palestinians with their vote choose those who live by the sword rather than the olive branch of peace, they all will continue to live miserably and die by that sword.
John Hogue
(31 December 2008)
12 Responses “The Fate of HAMAS: Part 2”
"For real democracy to flower, you first need a real humanity." - 
John:
Truly you gloss over and mis-state some very fundamental issues and events over the creation of israel, therein displaying your Jewish leanings or poor sources of information.
israel was created through the League of Nations, being a proposal to carve up Palestine (not dissimilar to the proposed carve up of Bosnia) principally as decided by the USA, Britain, France and Russia.
No reasoned or intelligent thought was given to the wishes of the indigenous peoples on such a crazy proposal. These indigenous people, lets call them ‘the Palestinians’ who had lived there ‘continuously’ for well over 3,000 years, were never consulted.
One can thus presume the arrogance of the British, and the pure hatred and malovence toward the Arabs (being Muslim and Christian) living in Palestine, by those world powers at the turn of the 20th Century (USA GB Fr, USSR).
I ask you how is it possible; how can you rationalise that Jews of European decent could ever have automatic rights to land whilst they, their parents and even their great, great, great, grand parents never even saw this land with their own eyes in their life time.
The concept of israels’ right to Palestinian land; because israel existed 3,000 years ago is utter nonsense and following this logic one could argue that as we all have DNA from the ancient Turkic tribes we have the right to invade Turkey and partition their territory. This arguement is an utter furphy.
The Jews also claim they are a ‘chosen people’ , but for what, you may well ask ? Recall that the Jewish prophet Moses himself, cursed his own people to eternal wondering.
Perhaps the Jewish state of israel was ‘chosen’ as the Anti Christ (after all Judaism preaches the total rejection of Christ and Christ’s teachings.
Can you not see that the collective consiousness of israel truly represents the very concept of an”Anti- Christ”) does it not fit the bill perfectly and you don’t need Nostradamus to point out the bleeding obvious now do you ?
Here you have a false nation state founded on a religion that preaches (and is recorded in its own religious books): “an eye for a eye, etc ” “to take your enemies babies by the leg and smash them on the rocks” ,” to kill, “to lay waste to anything that lives or breathes belonging to the enemy” The blood lust in these religeous teachings just goes on and on and is so glaringly opposite to Christs teachings. Don’t you agree ?
Seriously, with that in mind; Who in their right mind would want to live next to such a aggresive neighbour with such a violent disposition. Just look at the mass destruction, pre-emptive military action and inhumane treatment of its captives (the Palestinians) over the past 50 years or so.
It plain to everyone that israel does not want peace, it wants land, Palestinian land, now and other lands later ( and then some!)
In WW11 the Jews were slaughtered by the Germans not the Arabs and it should have been German lands that were partitioned and given to the Jews as compensation, not Arab lands.
John; why does israel have 200 or is it 300 hundred nuclear armed missiles. Why so many you might well ask, It would take only 5 or 6 to lay waste to all of the Middle East.
Perhaps the other 295 nuclear missiles are a future present for Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, Moscow and many other cities of Europe. Anyone in fact who has wronged the Jews is eligible to get one of these nuclear presents or gets in their way. If you don’t believe me, then just read their religious books, all will be revealed there.
So maybe after all; israel collectively really does represent “the chosen people”. Chosen to wipe out, to destroy humanity itself, chosen to represent the
“Anti- Christ” or the devil itself.
Do you ever ponder why the Romans, Assyrians, Spanish, Germans, Poles, French, Russians and many others were so enraged as to murder Jews enmasse. What is it about Judaism that causes countless non Jews to participate, to commit such henous acts of murder against Jews. (I’m thinking of the Germans, Poles, French and others who partook in murdering Jews during WW11.
Oddly, the only race to have ever treated the Jews better were the Arabs and look at the treatment the Arabs have received in return for that consideration.
Finally if you were to read Ben Gurions Autobiography you will see that the Palestinians (by and large a backward peasant society) were driven off their lands through extreme brutality, terrorism, murder and genocide by Zionist terrorists in collaboration with the British Army.
Serioulsy John; do you really believe that one ‘vounteers’ to leave their land to therein live in abject poverty, in fear, in concentration camps, with no future and therein be selectively murdered by their captors, the israelis. I don’t think so.
I have watched israel evolve over some 30 or so years and see it as the most dangerous thug in modern history, it’s track record is comparable to Attilla the Hun, Gengis Khan, Hitler and Germanies SS and Third Reich, PolPot and the like. This is ‘the’ state full of anti-christian fundamentalist terrorists, with its bloody founding principals derived from its very religious foundations, that makes me fear for the future of all humanity.
Who amongst us in the ‘west’ will stop the tragedy of the Palestinian people. We watch these people die on our very TV screens, we watch their bodies blown to pieces by US technology, whilst sipping our chardonay and celebrating the New Year.
We in the ‘West’ (USA, France, Britain and others ) created israel and we therefore have a duty to protect the Palestinians, yet we do nothing. To that end; lets hope your creator; or your soul forgives you for not doing so.
There is in the final anaysis “balance” in everything. We must assume the creator made it so; so that everything was created in pairs, as there is night and day, male and female, black and white, right and wrong and as such wrongs cannot go on unchecked forever, karma will make it right sooner or later.
John; as you ponder these briefly stated comments reflect on the “eye for and eye, tooth for tooth principals”, recall Moses curse, the tragic history of the Jews, the subjegation of the Palestinian peoples and their dogged survival against all odds throughout the historyof this ancient place.
Best wishes for your New Year
John,
bevan,
I more readily endorse john’s analysis
Bevan’s analysis looks more to me as anti-jewish sentiment.
What is lacking in bevan’s analysis is the enormous importance of Islam.
Best wishes for 2009 and wishing for the world to become “sensible”….
A reading of Paul Johnson’s ‘A History of the Jews’ basically backs up what you say, John.
The Palestinians were initially offered 2/3 of what is now Israel and chose to decline the offer and go to war.
The remaining Arab States treat Palestinians no better. I remember reading how Palestinians were cleansed from areas of Iraq, are considered vermin in Saudi Arabia, and second class citizens in other Arab countries.
Here’s a more constructive way for countries to approach the problem. Rather than just let Arab countries use the Palestinian issue to distract their citizens from their own domestic ills, any country who officially complains should be required to contribute to a Palestinian Economic Development fund, which provides education and jobs to Palestinians, aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty and terror. Give the Palestinian people hope, jobs, and proper education that provides them with something better to do and focus on than their hatred for Israel. Give them the education they need to stop screwing themselves with bad decisions.
Even better, how about seeing if there can be a joint Israeli-Palestinian energy independence project, making the whole of Israel and Palestine free from dependence on oil.
In the end, both Israel and the Palestinians are both being treated unfairly by other Arab countries. Ironically, probably even moreso the Palestinians, who are treated as second class citizens or even ‘vermin’ in other Arab countries, and then used as scapegoats for advancing those countrys’ domestic and anti-Israel agendas.
John
While there may be a kernal of truth in your assertion that the Palestinians allowed themselves to be victims by deserting their fields, homes and businesses, the truth is a little more complex. Originally the Balfour/Picot pact of 1917(?) mandated for the creation of a Jewish state. From what I have read, this was so both France (Picot) and England (Balfour) could obtain more loans from their bankers, the Rothschilds so they could continue with that bloody slaughter called World War 1.
Both prior to and after the formation of the state of Israel Jewish commandos waged what we would call now low scale ethnic cleansing. There was a documented campaign of terror waged upon the original occupants of Palestine by those Jews who had emigrated to Palestine after the Balfour/Picot pact. These Jews were not those who had survived the death camps but were mainly those who had been born in Palestine. One example of this was that in 1953 or thereabouts, Ariel Sharon, later to become both a general and prime minister of Israel was indicted by the UN General Assembly for his commando’s part in the massacre of over 80 unarmed women and children in a Palestinian village. The USofA vetoed that in the Security Council so nothing came of it. This action of his happened all thoughout that period against the Palestinians. No wonder they left! In most cases, they had little option. Their neighbours who they had grown up with had now acquired the backing of some very powerful friends and were killing them or driving them out by land confiscation etc. For me, the actions of people like Sharon would have fitted in with Heydrich and Himmler. Their methods were the same, the results were the same, it was only the level of slaughter that was different.
Therefore, to blame them for leaving is a little rich, they were driven out by the use of terror.
(And I thought we were meant to be having a war on terror. Seems rather selective to me.)
It truly is astounding how conflict can propogate itself through so many years, yet centrally confine itself to a division of peoples who are the only impetus for such conflict. This in of itself is a correlating socio-ethnic phenomena. The Isrealies are a maligned group within Euopean culture, the Palestinians maligned within the Middle East.
The provocative element to these franctuous origins have been by and large created by intransigence of greater powers originating in the doctrine of great powers have the right to determine the resources, and the order of the communities, and laws within those areas colonies, minor powers. Zbignew Bryzinski (forgive the spelling) said these people are incapable of helping themselves, therefore we have to step in, however, if these two groups anihilated eachother would we miss them ? Of course not, we would be guilty of not resolving their problems by wisdom, and as you say Mr Hogue, “It may sound cruel to say it” but we have brought this upon them.
Great powers have the ability to divide in order to control natural resources, confront to control idealogy, or claim mastery in order to control ecology. Great Britain has espoused resources, America Democracy, Germany ecology. No the ecology of mastery over regions, in a direct claim of superiority, rather than eqanimity contrasting Great Britain and the US and the USSR. Unfortunately we have been blind to this, and have confused these as values, rathe than conflicts between or struggles between great powers. I predict this is the interpretation of the
“The miserable, unhappy, republic,
Will be devastated by the new magistrate:
Their great (H)amassing of wicked exile,
Will cause the Swiss to carry off their great contracts.”
for the miserable unhappy republic represents the independents of culturally integral regions; for the devastated by the new magistrate represents the acts of the democracy of the great powers, and devastation of these ecologies; for the Their great amassing of wicked exile represents thewickedness sprung from the division of the value ecologically and culturally, through such political interference; and for will cause the Swiss to carry off their great contracts is representative of the end of these interferences by these super powers, great powers, due to the collapse of the value of these resources, such as peak oil, the swiss being known at the time of Nostradamus as being both a mamber of the Holy Roman empire before, and newly gaining its independence from said; revealing this similar situation, the conflict between the exiles of The Holy Roman Empire, who were moslty Germans, the anti Christ, or conflict between Judaism, and Christianity, the the independence of one of these from the oppression of these former super powers. Who would misthem, if they were destroyed: as we see these battles have been going on for many years, and the best course of action is to claim neutrality as the swiss did, if they do not help them by allowing them to expand their own regions for growing space, then the conflict of the end of days may well begin.
John,
Both you and Bevan, in his counterpoint to your Fate of Hamas – Part II article, make some very good and valid points. In total however, I believe Bevin exhibits an anti and hateful approach toward the Jews while your comments are more rational, realistic and even handed, showing how the Jews and Palestinians could have lived together in relative peace these many years.
I think the Hamas Part II article is one of the best you have written in quite some time.
Morris Gildemeister
John, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
If I am being bullied, starved, held prisoner in my home with no running water, if all attempts to provide me with aid is being blocked by my imprisoners, do you not think that, given the means to do so, I would hire the biggest, baddest bully on the block to fight back for me when I couldn’t?
This is why the Hamas was elected in Gaza – yes, they are extremists, however the Israeli’s have been more than extreme in their manner of dealing with both the Palestinians and Gaza for far too long. And they have been able to act in this manner thanks to the full support of a self interested US government, a biased American media, the UN (which does not want to admit what a huge mistake was made and therefore accept responsiblity for that mistake). Is Hamas right? Of course not. Is Israel right in its reaction? Absolutely not.
But children are dying. The blood of innocents is running in the streets. Isn’t that all that matters?
“The state of Israel would have been a very different place if most of the Palestinians had risked staying as a sizable minority at nearly a parity in number with the Jews. Owning land is empowerment in the Middle East. All rationalizations aside, when a land owner becomes a refugee he has chosen disenfranchisement. Choose the path of a refugee and you choose the life of a victim.”
John imchallange you to show any proof of ownership of land of palestinians!!!
you are correct about the age old batle but simply cannot get by your own anti religious bias to see the root cause of this situation.
from the nile to the euphrates is israeli land -promised and written about 2500 years ago. i think we might be seeing thew beginnings of the reestablishment of this covenant.
maranantha
bevan’s lack of historic knowledge, like the rest of the confused world today, is all based on evil, arab i$lamo-fa$ci$t, petro-dollar-produced misinformation and disinformation; it is a dangerous conspiracy, akin to the nazi prototype: tell a lie often enough and it becomes truth. God will expose all of these arab/muslim deceptions sooner or later. I rely on historic writings, news clippings from British Journals and eyewitnesses accounts to history rather than the lies of modern day fa$ci$t arab$ who pass down thousands of lines of tall tale after tall tale of their deceitful history.
bevan, learn from REAL history:
On April 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council: “The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce … They preferred to abandon their homes, belongings and everything they possessed.”
“The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously…” (Emil Ghory, secretary of the AHC, quoted in the Beirut Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948)
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.” (Mahmud Abbas (”Abu Mazen”), PLO spokesman, quoted in Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO, March 1976)
“For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs … they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy.” (Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, quoted in the Jordanian daily al-Urdun, April 9, 1953)
‘But while they express no bitterness against the Jews…they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: ‘We know who our enemies are,’ they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes.” [a British diplomat, following his visit to refugees in Gaza, quoted in British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 (From "Revising or Devising Israel's History" by Prof. Shlomo Slonim in Jewish Action, Summer 5760/2000, Vol. 60 #4)]
“Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.” (The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, Beirut, 1973)
“The Arab states, which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promises to return.” (Filastin, Jordan, February 19, 1949)
“The first of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere….At the first signs of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.” (Reported in the Jaffa newspaper, Ash Sha’ab, on January 30, 1948)
Another Jaffa paper, As Sarih (March 30, 1948) excoriated Arab villagers near Tel Aviv for “bringing down disgrace on us all by ‘abandoning the villages.”
“Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war” (John Bagot Glubb, the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, quoted in the London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948).
“Tens of thousands of Arab men, women and children fled toward the eastern outskirts of the city in cars, trucks, carts, and afoot in a desperate attempt to reach Arab territory until the Jews captured Rushmiya Bridge toward Samaria and Northern Palestine and cut them off. Thousands rushed every available craft, even rowboats, along the waterfront, to escape by sea toward Acre.” (New York Times, April 23, 1948).
“Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit….It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” (The Economist, October 2, 1948)
The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country.”
“It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem.” (Near East Broadcasting Station (Cyprus),
April 3, 1949)
One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families. They knew that a war was imminent; they didn’t doubt that the Arab armies would quickly win a sweeping victory, and they wanted to be as far as possible from the battlefield.
The second wave of emigration came in the spring of 1948, after fighting had erupted between Arab irregulars and Jewish defense forces. This time the urban population was involved, and in far greater numbers – for example, some seventy thousand from Jaffa and sixty thousand from Haifa. Over two hundred thousand Arabs emigrated in this wave, despite efforts of the Jews in various parts of the country to dissuade them from leaving.
The Haifa Workers’ Council, for example, published, on 28 April 1948, a moving plea– but that appeal and many similar ones were of no avail. Most of the local Arab leaders had already managed to take flight, and directly or indirectly, they encouraged the Palestinian population from across the border to “temporarily” leave their homes. But the largest wave of Arab refugees, three hundred thousand or more, followed the massive Arab invasion of 15 May 1948, the day after Israel’s declaration of independence.
The large majority of these emigrants were of the poorer strata of the Arab population, both urban and rural, the former group including day laborers such as the thousands of port workers who had come to Palestine from Syria. A report to the Conciliation Commission (comprising representatives of the United States, France, and Turkey) appointed by the UN in the fall of 1948 assessed the property abandoned by the refugees at 200 million pounds sterling – considerably less than the value of the property the eight hundred thousand Jewish refugees from Arab countries had left behind.
Various other leading Arabs, 1947-8 and thereafter, echoed that Arab leaders in 1947-8 encouraged Arabs to leave Palestine. Harry C. Stebbens, who was in an official position in the British Mandatory Government in Palestine in 1947-48, wrote in the London Evening Standard (Friday, 10 January, 1969):
“Long before the end of the British mandate, between January and April ‘48, practically all my Arab Palestinian staff of some 200 men and women and all of the 1800 labour force had left Haifa in spite of every possible effort to assure them of their safety if they stayed. They all left for one or more of the following reasons: “1.The Arab terrorism engendered by the November 1947 UN partition resolution frightened them to death of their imaginative souls and they feared Jewish retaliation. 2. Propagandists promised a blood bath as soon as the mandate ended in which the street of all the cities would run with blood. 3. The promised invasion by the foreign Arab armies (which started on May 14, 1948, with the Arab Legion massacre of some 200 Jewish settlers at Kfar-etzion) was preceded by extensive broadcasts from Cairo, Damascus, Amman, and Beirut to the effect that any Arabs who stayed would be hanged as collaborators with the Jews.
The Palestinian Arabs were the victims then, as in 1967, of their own propaganda, and having on the average no stomach for violence they ran. I have met many of my Palestinian Arab friends since in Beirut, Damascus, Amman, and in the Persian Gulf states, and they have all without exception gladly told me that they had wished they had listened to me and stayed – as did some 200,000 who became and still are the most economically advanced Arabs in the Middle East.”
A British police report to Jerusalem Headquarters on 26 April 1948 attested:
“Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab population to stay and carry on with their normal lives…” London Times, May 5 1948–”The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the “Zionist gangs” very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.” — Monsignor George Hakim (Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee), as quoted in Sada al Janub, August 16 1948 (Beirut)
“Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit… It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” — The Economist, October 2 1948 (London)
“The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.” — editorial, Falastin, February 19 1949 (Amman)
“The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade… He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean… Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.” — Habib Issa, in the daily US-published Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda, June 8 1951 (New York)
Only after Arabs broke the ceasefire in July 1948 did Israelis cease to encourage Arabs to remain in their Israeli homes. 7/48-Arabs end truce, Israel embarks on major offensive. More Arabs flee– Israel becomes much less concerned about encouraging Arabs to stay- many Arab villages taken. Ben-Gurion states there will be no return-those who start war must bear the consequences-and Israel has many counter-claims.
Arab refugees-Israel takes land, homes-Israel takes hard line on compensation (436-43)-debate on Arab repatriation-world is filled with refugees, acceptance of Jewish refugees is along the lines of Turkey-Greece swap; postwar E. Europe shifts of population, 13,000,000 shifted in India-Hindus, Moslems. Arab nations keep refugees in squalor for their political purposes; many refugees sink roots in new lands. Hard-fought Israeli victory that included possession of territories won on the battlefield; the migration of more than 700,000 Arab Palestinian refugees out of Israeli territory into adjacent areas controlled by various Arab states; the confiscation of the property left by the Arab refugees and its redistribution to Israelis.
Jordanian King Hussein in an interview with an Associated Press correspondent in January 1960: “Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner. They have not looked into the future. They have no plan or approach. They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, criminal.” Jordan is the only Arab state which not only granted the Palestinian refugees citizenship, but also absorbed them socially, economically, and politically, allowing them to work and become integrated into all aspects of the national life. The Arab states did and do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die. Arab governments regarded the destruction of the State of Israel as a more pressing matter than the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian bitterness and anger had to be kept alive. It was clear that this could best be done by ensuring that a great many Palestinians continued to live under sub-normal conditions, the victims of hunger and poverty. No Arab Government preached this as a defined policy; most Arab Governments tacitly put it into practice.On April 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council: “The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce … They preferred to abandon their homes, belongings and everything they possessed.”
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The Gaza Prison Camp
From The Huffington Post
Posted March 16, 2008
“Gaza conditions at ‘40-year low’” the BBC headlined last week. Rarely a week goes by without a politician or organization deploring the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But I do not hear anyone describe its root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at maintaining Palestinians as stateless refugees in order to pressure Israel.
I lived in Gaza as a child in the 1950s when Egypt conducted guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza, then under Egyptian control. My father commanded these operations, carried out by “fedayeen,” (which means, “self sacrifice”). This became the frontline of Arab Jihad against Israel. My father was killed by Israel in a targeted assassination in 1956.
Today the Gaza Strip, now under the control of Hamas, has become the Gaza prison camp for 1.5 million Palestinians and continues to serve as the launching pad for attacks against Israeli citizens.
This is the legacy of the Arab world’s Palestinian refugee policy, started 60 years ago, when the Arab League implemented special laws regarding Palestinians that all Arab countries had to abide by. Arab countries could not absorb Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian married a citizen of an Arab country, that Palestinian could not become a citizen of his or her spouse’s country. A Palestinian can be born, live and die in an Arab country, but never gain its citizenship. Even now I receive e-mails from Palestinians telling me they cannot have a Syrian passport, for example, and must remain Palestinian even though they have never set foot in the West Bank or Gaza. Forcing the Palestinian identity on them is designed to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee status. Palestinians have been used and abused by Arab nations, and by Palestinian terrorists, for the purpose of destroying Israel.
The 22 Arab states certainly do not have a shortage of land. Many surrounding Arab areas, such as the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, are very sparsely populated. But absorbing Palestinians would end their refugee status and their desire to harm Israel.
Arab wealth, which is increasing dramatically because of skyrocketing oil prices, is not used to improve the lives, infrastructure and economy of the people of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it supports terror groups who reject Israel’s existence and oppose peace with Israel. The average Gaza man has a better employment opportunity if he joins Hamas.
Gazans’ breach of their checkpoint with Egypt in January, orchestrated by Hamas, is a result of the Palestinian refugee policy. The checkpoints on the Arab side of Gaza could not keep the inmates inside. The Arab plan to overpopulate Gaza exploded in the wrong direction. After this explosion, Suleiman Awwad, an Egyptian administration spokesman, said, “Egypt is a respected state, its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones.” In other words, Egypt is not like Israel, which is a disrespected state. Gazans should not direct the violence at Egypt, only at Israel. This is Arab conventional wisdom.
Last month Hamas threatened to bring 40,000 Palestinians, primarily children and women, to the Gaza border with Israel to protest Israel’s restrictions on Gaza. Some Hamas leaders hinted they would send these protestors to breach the border, once again demonstrating that the Palestinian terrorists have no qualms about endangering the lives of innocent people — Israelis or Palestinians. Fortunately, only 5,000 showed up.
But Hamas did succeed two days later in killing an Israeli: a 47 year-old father of four during a rocket attack from Gaza while he was sitting in his car next to Sapir College near Sderot. Two weeks earlier, two Israeli brothers, Osher and Rami Twito, ages 8 and 19, were seriously injured by a rocket from Gaza while buying their father a birthday present. Osher’s left leg had to be amputated.
Israel completely left Gaza in August 2005. In May and June 2007, Hamas waged war against its Palestinian brothers in Fatah to gain control of Gaza. Hamas intensified its rockets attacks on Israeli towns, compelling Israel to take economic and military measures against Gaza. Hamas has become a danger not only to Israel, but to Palestinians and to neighboring Arab countries, as well. Nevertheless, the Arab world still refuses to see its role in creating this monster. It is difficult to find a similar situation in human history: the intentional creation of a refugee status for a million and a half people, sustained for 60 years. The Arab world has cut its nose to spite its face.
The world needs to understand that this dangerous mess started when 22 Arab countries agreed to create a human prison called the Gaza Strip. Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. It is time for the Arab world to open their side of the borders and absorb the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza who wish to be absorbed. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.
Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Cairo and Gaza City, is the author of, “Now They Call Me Infidel.”
thank you thank you thank you John.
You pegged it, not because I say so, but because HISTORY, and currents events, say so.
I wont call you pro- or anti-anything. It would just show my (ahem, see above comments) bias.
I a new to the I-Ching philosophy, but I am in no way new to middle eastern history.
Continue to speak what you know, no matter the resistance.
I know that those of us who have things to say, (that no one wants to hear) need encouraging.
Bevan, the only thing we “westerners” owe palestinians, is to view their self-destruction in an unbiased light.
Your version of Israel, is both sickening and laughable.
Its the Q’RAN which contains quotes like “The rocks will cry out “Oh MUSLIM, behind me hides a Jew! Come and kill him!!”
I know we’re getting into the same type of thing (on a non-rocket launching/tank rolling level) as they are in in GAza currently.
I get that.
Doesnt change who is who, in the picture though.
Bevan is the polluted Jew hater who will defend the actions of the Jew haters, no matter WHAT they do or say.
Bevan, you have “watched Israel for 30 years”, through hate filled, twisted eyes.
You havent seen one second of truth, you have seen hate, put there by the same system that targets children, OR, in cases I’M very familiar with, ropes bundles of children togerther, THEN shoots at U.S. forces from the center of the group.
There IS evil in this conflict, and speaking as someone who has fought them, it is ISlam who is evil.
Not one US soldier, or Israeli soldier would do what the Islamist fighters do.
They are evil incarnate, for it is evil which fuels them, and their religion.
It is a religion of hatred, and IT, is the source of ALL that harms the middle east.
Remove Islam, and there wil be peace.
As long as Islam remains, there will be no peace.
Take out any other player, and stll the haatred remains there.
It is Islam.
I’m not sorry if you’re offended, it is the truth. I wont apologize for speaking what I’ve seen.
You are both right and both wrong. Israel is the seat of a people who were God’s first love in history; nothing that happens to Israel is happening without God’s knowledge or guidance, even if it is using the cruelest of governments aided by the cruelest of secret services like the Mossad, a team of assassins. Yes, the Zionists did their brutal part in the beginning and that set the tone for the struggles that followed. You kill by the sword and you get to taste the sword! I travelled to Israel and yes there are some Arabs there who only ask not to be disturbed and work to integrate as much as they can in the Israeli society. But the people are obtuse nowadays and by tradition have taken the habit to trust too blindly their government. Isn’t it the same with us in the US? People have predicted that the OBama’s honey moon with his own fans won’t last even as long as one term. The greater the excitement the least trustable is the leader to be sure! Populaces have never been good at determining the value of their leaders.
My point is that, if Israel is to know peace she will have to build it from the grass roots with God Himself. No other option. Thanks for reading. MK
PS that is the point of view of an Unificationist.
Palestinians seem to be the overrated subject of this show.
The Israelis pull the strings to this show, they radicalize the Palestinian populations to serve their own needs.(and as a result other arab nationalities along side)The Israeli people elect radicals to government,they spread demoralizing propaganda,they assassinate peace makers.
Israel has invested far too much into demonizing a population of people so they can justify their crimes.
Palestinians do not want to be victims do not ask to be victims and are not beyond human nature and response.
Part of human nature is the spirit of the people, which is why reparations become so important to a people that have suffered injustice.
This conflict continues because of injustice. Palestinians regardless of who they choose as leaders whether they march in peaceful protest or armed conflict the result is injustice.
They is such a break in the spirit of Palestinians this conflict will continue until it can be repaired,its a must.
When the war broke out in Gaza I was deeply upset that now the Israeli Zionist machine was to going to pull out its demonizing crew in the media,more to break down the spirit,its intolerable. Try to imagine what its like to be on the receiving side of such demonization.
I think the casting in this future is a bit off.
Israel and their actions should be the subject of this show.Lets see if willing, take away a letter here or add a letter there to a prophecy and maybe an Israeli leader’s name might show up as a character in this play. Stop the type casting its clouding judgement.