#Davidf

You continue to argue - without any substantiation and totally disregarding the contemporaneous sources I have produced to you - that only a minority of the Arabs fled of their own volition.

This is what Katz states in his book "Battleground" of the claim that the Arabs were uprooted by the Jews:

"The fabrication can probably most easily be seen in the simple circumstance that at the time the alleged cruel expulsion of Arabs by Zionists was in progress, it passed unnoticed. Foreign newspapermen who covered the war of 1948 on both sides did, indeed, write about the flight of the Arabs, but even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that it was not voluntary.

In the three months during which the major part of the flight took place – April, May, and June 1948 – the London Times, at that time [openly] hostile to Zionism, published eleven leading articles on the situation in Palestine in addition to extensive news reports and articles. In none was there even a hint of the charge that the Zionists were, driving the Arabs from their homes.

More interesting still, no Arab spokesman mentioned the subject. At the height of the flight, on April 27, Jamat Husseini, the Palestine Arabs’ chief representative at the United Nations, made a long political statement, which was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress), the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

The Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance that their departure would help in the war against Israel"

Why won't you publish any evidence to support your claim that only a minority of Arabs fled of their own volition?

In other words - put up or shut up.

Of course it was of their own volition. They fled an army of racist murderers.

The earlier racist Hebron murders of Jews by Moslems and the superstitious trigger for it illustrated the evil of religion and especially of theocratic religion amplified by racism. This is something that will need to be confronted in negotiating the terms of a Middle East peace.

Dear David F.,

Both "sides" in the Middle-East are guilty of certain wrongdoings, both historical and current: this needs to be addressed and redressed and so we are discussing it here.

So far so good and I enjoy reading your insights regarding the Middle-East conflict - I think that you have much to contribute.

However, what I don't like is when you use this opportunity, on the back of the suffering in the Middle-East, to push and proselytise your own dogma of civil Western democracy, trying to sell this snake-oil as the ultimate cure for all problems, as if we would all be in heaven if only everyone had a political system just like the USA and Australia.

Apart from the obvious wrongs and cruelty inflicted on each other and which needs to be corrected, there is nothing wrong about any group of people who wish to isolate themselves, on their own legitimate land of course, and live there only with their own kind of people. It seems that neither of the sides to the Middle-East conflict are interested or happy with the lifestyle that you try to sell them.

I could argue that ethnicity is a very poor choice of who one wants to live with, since people of the same ethnicity can be extremely different in lifestyle - but ultimately its their choice, not mine and not yours.

If it is up to me, then I would like to share my life exclusively with people who have similar values and future aspirations rather than with those with whom I only happened to share a common past.

#Emperor

You have been pretty vocal but quite tongue tied about letting me know what you thought of this video

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMSb8ZIHVE

Are you too dumbstruck to reply?

You obviously agree with me and show #davidf to be grossly in error in claiming only a minority of Arabs left of their own volition - when you state:

"So 700000 Arabs fled an invasion of heavily-armed army of racist butchers. Of course it was of their own volition."

And again:

"Everyone who flees an invasion of well armed foreign murderers does so of his or her own volition, unless they were kidnapped and bundled on to exit trucks."

Of course when you use the terms "army of racist butchers" and "well armed foreign invaders" you are referring to:

1. the 500 to 1000 Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and Transjordanians who entered Samaria and Galilee across the Jordan and the Palestine-Lebanon frontier in February 1948.

2. A band of up to 500 Yugoslavs presumed to be Bosnian Moslems who were reported en route to the Lydda District during the first week of March 1948.

3. A small party under Fawzi Bey Kawukji who entered Palestine on 5 March 1948.

4. Numbers of Egyptians who entered Gaza District in parties of up to a hundred at a time.

They weren't on a sightseeing tour of the Holyland.

They of course preceded six Arab armies - Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq - who invaded Palestine on 15 May 1948.

Armed foreign invaders all and racist butchers intent on wiping out the Jews.

For once you seem to have got your facts right Emperor.

David Singer wrote “You continue to argue - without any substantiation and totally disregarding the contemporaneous sources I have produced to you - that only a minority of the Arabs fled of their own volition.”

I don’t argue that only a minority fled of their own volition. I have seen no evidence that the number who fled of their own volition was a majority or a minority..

You keep repeating that a majority fled of their own volition, and have cited Arab sources admitting they encouraged them to flee. The fact that they were encouraged to flee is not a proof that those who fled of their own volition were a majority. Repetition of an unproven assertion is not a proof of that assertion. Possibly you can browbeat a witness like that. That is your tactic. You keep hammering an unproven assertion until your opponent gives up. Apparently the Israeli line is that most Arabs fled on their own volition. I see no reason to accept the Israeli line.

Whether it was a minority or a majority who fled a war zone of their own volition why were they not allowed to return to their homes? It does not excuse the injustice if they fled of their own volition.

Your apparent objective is to promote Israel. Do you think you have been effective in doing that? You have not done it with me. Do you think you have done it with any of the others who are following this thread?

You seem more interested in winning an argument one way or another than in promoting Israel.

Returning to the original topic, if Obama colluded in resolution 2334 his action was reasonable. Israel deserves condemnation for the settlements.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I appreciate your desire to live with those that you feel a commonality with. However, it is rarely possible in the modern state. Even if we have a commonality with a group or person they may change or we may change. Once I might have agreed with David Singer. For peace we must learn to live with difference

#davidf

The following evidence is incontrovertible:

1. "In the three months during which the major part of the flight took place – April, May, and June 1948 – the London Times, at that time [openly] hostile to Zionism, published eleven leading articles on the situation in Palestine in addition to extensive news reports and articles. In none was there even a hint of the charge that the Zionists were, driving the Arabs from their homes.

More interesting still, no Arab spokesman mentioned the subject. At the height of the flight, on April 27, Jamat Husseini, the Palestine Arabs’ chief representative at the United Nations, made a long political statement, which was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress), the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

The Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance that their departure would help in the war against Israel" - Katz "Battleground"

2."The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea." Bilby - New Star in the Middle East (1950)

3. "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 New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951)