#davidf

Why is it so important to me that you agree that most of the Arabs fled of their own volition?

Because you started this tortuous conversation with this comment:

"In the Arab-Israeli conflict both sides lie. I was told and I believed that the Arabs who fled their homes in the 1948 War of Independence fled because they were told to by the Arabs and would return with advancing Arab armies. It was a lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris

"A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."

I believed that lie and feel bothered about it. Neither the Arab nor the Israeli side can be trusted. I think it is wise to doubt both sides."

What you called a "lie" was in fact not a "lie". Most of the Arabs left of their own volition.

The lie is the claim that 700000 Arabs had been uprooted by the Jews.

It is but one of many canards uttered against the Jews that need to be answered and corrected whenever it is made.

You now are at the point where you state:

"It may be true that most fled of their own volition."

That is a big advance on your initial suggestion that they were uprooted by the Jews.

You state further on:

"You want me to believe that most fled of their own volition. I will say it may be true, but I don't know for sure."

Morris, Bilby, Katz, Atiyah, al-Azm, Hakim,Issa, Azzam Pasha and the 1948 London Times support that statement.

If you don't accept these sources, surely you need to produce your own sources that contradict them.

I will answer your question on why the Arabs were not allowed to return when we agree on how they came to leave.

I watched the video that David Singer recommended which was quite a concession as I find videos, especially when they run for 57 minutes, to be 1% rational communications and 99% performances. This video was more or less what I expected, and it reminded me of my childhood during the war when I admired all the science and engineering and technology the British created and never gave a thought to the injustice of their overlordship in Rhodesia and Kenya and Tanganyika and India where the natives were no more than background. (Until the natives started getting uppity as they have in Palestine which is host to the last racist Western colony in the old style that still infests the world). Thankfully I grew out of it by age 15 and maybe Mr Singer will one day grow out of his infatuation with the Western colonial possession of Israel.

But let's see the comparison with the growth of the kibbutzim blending ethnic racism with socialist spirit as described in the video, and all the achievements starting with the garnering of every drop of water and the growth of a modern Western-based colonial state.

My eyes ran down the gross ugliness of the comments column claiming God had chosen the Jewish people, and I was reminded of the blasphemous ugliness of “Land of hope and glory, mother of the free / How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee? / Wider Yet and Wider May thy Bounds be set / God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet…” of my school days. Israel is the only remaining colonial monstrosity to keep alive the racial supremacy pretence epitomised by the British Land of Hope and Glory.

Dear David Singer,

«I will answer your question on why the Arabs were not allowed to return when we agree on how they came to leave.»

I also am eager to hear your opinion on why the Arabs were not allowed back - what a pity that I might have to wait indefinitely until the two Davids agree, one claiming that he doesn't know some particular piece of information while the other claims that he does know.

On the subject-matter, I would be very surprised if you can answer, because:
1) Ben Gurion and the rest of the Israeli leadership of 1948 are no longer alive.
2) What they said publicly is not necessarily the truth: they had political interest in presenting this decision of theirs in a certain light, regardless whether it's true or not.
3) None of them were Christian.
4) You are not a priest.

Unless they told you their deepest secrets in the confidence of the confessional, how do you propose to know what was in their hearts-of-hearts when they decided to deny the Arab's return?

The material result is exactly the same either way: the Arabs in question were not allowed back in (other than a number of individuals and families that WERE quietly allowed back in, according to my family's direct testimony, but this was never published), but what really matters here is the true motivation of the Israeli leadership. As I said, I don't think that we now can tell what it was.

Dear David,

I once believed that all Arabs left of their own volition. Then I heard that some of the Arabs were driven out and some were massacred. I had been lied to. I can agree that most left of their own volition, but none of them should have been driven out or killed because they refused to leave.

As far as I can see the injustice of not allowing their return was justified by the creation of the Jewish state. Thus the state was founded on injustice. The injustice of the founding of Israel can be removed if it became a state for all of its citizens and not merely a Jewish state.

Jews have been oppressed, persecuted and murdered. One would hope that they would behave differently from their oppressors. That is an unreasonable hope because Jews are human. Oppressed and oppressors are both human. Jews in power will behave much like those who have had power over them.

In Israel there are dissidents like B’tselem and the refuseniks who are appalled by the actions of the Israeli government. They are aware that Jews are acting like those who have persecuted Jews. However, they can only protest. They will never be in power.

Israel can boast of its technology, literature and culture. The English in colonising could boast of bringing Shakespeare and English Common Law to “lesser breeds without the law” as Kipling termed those oppressed by imperial England. Israel copies England in its boasts.

One justification for European imperialism was that it brought Christianity to the ‘heathen’. I respect British culture but not British imperialism or Christianity. However, they are entwined.

Yuyutsu on 1 March 2017 1:45:36 AM mentioned that none of the parties in 1948 were Christian. What does that have to do with anything? With Christianity’s sorry record of imperialism, wars of religion, Inquisition etc. It seems to me good not to be Christian.

Although I do find EmperorJulian’s rhetoric disturbing I appreciate Emperor Julian’s effort to return the Roman Empire to the relative tolerance of polytheism as opposed to the intolerance of monotheism.

Dear David F.,

«Yuyutsu on 1 March 2017 1:45:36 AM mentioned that none of the parties in 1948 were Christian. What does that have to do with anything?»

What it meant in context, and nothing besides, is that since Ben Gurion was not a Christian and also David Singer is not a priest, it follows that David Singer did not hear Ben Gurion's confession!

«The injustice of the founding of Israel can be removed if it became a state for all of its citizens and not merely a Jewish state.»

Yes it could - but at what price?

Soon enough Israel would come under Shariah law and its current citizens, most of whom were not yet even born when that injustice was done, would be lucky to remain alive as Dhimmis.

Further to the solution to the water problem in Palestine, and to the kibbutz movement, both the initial devotion and genius in garnering useful water essentially from dew and in the self-sacrificing achievement of those first racist/socialist communes, both have long ago been swept aside by rapid degeneration into an ultra-racist conquistador state on Palestinian land, and the propaganda video recommended by the racist David Singer cynically draws on the past to elide the natives from its description of the present obscene leftover of Western colonialism.

On the theft of the existing underground aquifers in Palestine, see http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.574554 which lays the swindle bare.

The originating sin in the Israel project is ethnic supremacism, an extreme form of racism.