Submission: Two sides to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both merit reflection

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a polarizing issue that many UCLA students are familiar with, whether they hold a direct stake in it or not. Certain communities and groups on campus have cut ties as a result of hostile rhetoric, with each side speaking in terms that reflect their inherent biases and failing to acknowledge the narrative of the other. While healthy debate and conflicting viewpoints are essential to any college campus, students invested in this issue have yet to engage with one another, contributing to an already negative campus climate. Editorials and submissions in this publication constantly point fingers and, as witnessed recently, disregard the validity of an entire group’s claims. This gets us nowhere. We should not continue to operate as though this is a conflict of right and wrong because, ultimately, this is a conflict of right and right, and its discourse should be nuanced accordingly.

During spring break this year, we had the incredible opportunity to travel to Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, or PA, with 20 other student leaders to witness firsthand the ways in which the conflict has affected individuals and families living on both sides. Going into the trip, many of us had our own perceptions and thoughts about what we wished to learn. For some of us, these perceptions came from what we witnessed on campus; for others, including ourselves, they came from our upbringing and background knowledge of the region’s history. At the end of our weeklong journey, however, we were all more willing to set aside any preconceived notions, replacing them with a more nuanced understanding of the intricacies of the conflict.

One of the more profound interactions we experienced during our trip was centered around compromise and cooperation. We visited Gush Etzion, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and a town where violence periodically erupts due to the contentious nature of the settlement. While in Gush Etzion, we met with two individuals – an Israeli settler named Shaul Judelman and a Palestinian man named Antwan Saca – who, against all odds, share a unique friendship and a collective desire to achieve peace.

The individuals play an integral role in an initiative called Roots, which focuses on a grassroots, ground-up approach to a peaceful solution, rather than relying on government officials, who can often be misinformed or misguided in their tactics. Judelman and Saca stressed the importance of this type of grassroots work, not only in Israel and the PA, but also in places such as UCLA. It is integral that we use these narratives to challenge our own biases. In our view and the view of Judelman, Saca and many others in the region who live with the repercussions of this age-old conflict on a daily basis, this is the type of mindset that will achieve peace – not one where both sides are constantly at each other’s throats.

We can learn a similar lesson about appreciating others’ narratives from our experiences with Israel’s notorious checkpoint system. Palestinian students from Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem told us stories about being unable to sit for exams because of checkpoint closure. We heard similar stories of students missing lectures after forgetting their ID at home and being barred passage.

On the other hand, we listened to an Israeli soldier who operates a checkpoint that is responsible for preventing one to two acts of terror daily. Consequently, we were given statistics relating the institution of checkpoints to a decrease in suicide bombing attacks.

Complex issues like these characterize the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but their intricacies fail to materialize during discourse. One would be unfairly painting the situation if they included only obstacles to Palestinian freedom of movement without mentioning that such roadblocks have saved Israeli civilians from terror. On the other hand, one would be unfairly painting the situation if they described all Palestinians as unwilling to make peace, when in reality, that description applies to only a specific subset of the population.

All too often, as our passions flare, we get focused on being correct. It is true and unjust that Palestinians suffer, and it is also true that Israel needs to defend itself. This obsession with convincing people to take a side without listening to different narratives feeds into this phenomenon of polarization. Until we begin to think more with our heads and less with our hearts, we will be stuck in this unforgiving vortex of playing right versus wrong.

We are Sujith Cherukumilli and Jay Joelson, and we come from very different communities, but are united by a common goal: bridging the divide. We are pro-Israel, pro-Palestine and pro-peace.

Cherukumilli is a third-year political science student. Joelson is a second-year business economics student.

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118 Comments

    1. Start loving needs to Start Learning.

      Abraham is the father of both Ishmael, whose descendants are the Arabs, and Isaac, whose son Jacob became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

      Abraham is buried in Hebron, in the cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank. His sons Isaac and Jacob (Israel) are also buried there.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs

      Jacob’s wife Rachel is buried in Bethlehem, also in the West Bank.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel%27s_Tomb

      The claim that the Jews are not indigenous to the land is completely false. Even their genetic makeup shows a close relationship between them and Arabs.

      http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2000/10/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry

      1. Absolutely pitiful. Thank you for making it so clear in your first line how shallow and therefore worthless what you were about to say is, that I didn’t have to waste a second reading the next word. Be well friend. I mean that. Be well.

        1. You also need to learn the term “false dichotomy”. In this case it applies to your incorrect assertion that all conflicts have one aggressor and one victim.

          Like the five Arab armies that attacked the fledgling state of Israel after it declared it’s independence.

          Or the 133 Jews who were murdered by Arabs during the 1929 Palestinian riots.

          And all of the Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan in 1948.

          1. Like there was no civil war at that time. I guess the Irgun were baking cookies.

            And of course no Palestinians were murdered by the Irgun.

            And nice of you to omit that Jews got the land of Israel. But want to steal more.

          2. Some more evidence for the masses who think this issue began less than 100 years ago.

            The Jewish ties to the land of Israel stretching back thousands of years is beyond question.

            Proof was written in stone over 1900 years ago on the Arch of Titus in Rome.

            It’s southern face shows a triumphal procession of Roman soldiers carrying off the spoils of war. The most obvious being the golden menorah, looted from the Temple in Jerusalem, which once stood on what we call the Temple Mount or the Al Haram Shariff.

            http://www.preteristarchive.com/Rome/images/titus/0081_arch-titus/titus_arch_relief_01.jpg

            Also visible on the far right are other Temple items, the two silver levitical trumpets and the golden table of show bread.

            http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/81/4681-004-CA908942.jpg

            But contrary to public opinion, even after the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. they were not all dispersed. Jews continued to live in the land.

            Another uprising occurred about 135 A.D. The Bar Kochba revolt against the Roman occupation resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands more Jews.

            This time proof is written on silver coins that celebrate their temporary freedom from Roman rule.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kochba_Revolt_coinage

            So was that the end of the Jews in Israel? Were they all exiled, enslaved, or killed?

            In the tiny settlement of Susya in the West Bank, a group of Palestinians living there have become the center of international attention because some of their buildings have been found to be illegal by the Israeli government and slated for demolition.

            What the media has completely missed is that close by lie the ruins of a fifth century Jewish Synagogue. A building whose mosaic tiled floor with twin menorahs again proves that the Jewish ties to the land are true.

            https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Synagogue_mosaic_at_Susya.JPG

            Next let’s travel back to Jerusalem where the Karaite synagogue has been in continual use, except for intermittent wars, since the ninth century.

            http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kE9jHplXyGA/TvtPHdQD9eI/AAAAAAAABhU/cjwNrlfMj-s/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-28+at+7.06.50+PM.png

            In the late 13th century the Ramban synagogue was built in Jerusalem. Being the second oldest in nearly continual use in Israel.

            http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.630761.1418132059!/image/3056883486.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_640/3056883486.jpg

            Another synagogue, the Hurva, was built in the early 18th century.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hurva_31_May_2010.JPG

            From census records dating back hundreds of years, we can see that Jerusalem was sparsely populated by Christians, Jews, as well as Arabs.

            It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that the population began to increase. Not only from Jewish, but Arab immigration as well.

            http://sites.psu.edu/pandaexpresscomm410/wp-content/uploads/sites/19308/2014/10/2000px-Population_of_Jerusalem_by_ethnicity.svg.png

            In 1965 Egyptian archaeologists uncovered what they thought was an ancient church in Gaza. On it’s floor a mosaic tile floor showed what they thought was an image of Perseus.

            From photographs, Jewish archaeologists quickly determined that the hebrew script spelled out on the mosaic was David. The ancient king of Israel.

            The church was actually a synagogue! After the 1967 war Gaza reverted back to Israeli control and the synagogue floor was removed.

            But someone had scratched out the tiled face of David in an attempt to alter history.

            http://members.bib-arch.org/bswb_graphics/BSBA/20/02/BSBA200205900L.jpg

            So please be aware. People today are still attempting to rewrite history. To convince you that the Jews have never existed and have no ties to the land, or have been absent for two thousand years and that their immigration began immediately after WWII.

            Whether the evidence is written on paper, on silver, on tile, or on stone, the conclusion is obvious. The Jewish ties to the land of Israel have been consistent for centuries.

          3. What about all these other Semites occupying Palestine longer and in far greater number than the Mizrahi? How do the alien European Ashkenazi get to steal their country?

          4. Hehehehe!

            Historical political entities

            Ancient

            Philistia,
            a name used in the Bible to refer to a pentapolis in the Southern
            Levant, established by Philistines c.1175 BC and existing in various
            forms until the Assyrian conquest in the 8th century BC
            Palaistinê or Palaestina names used by Greek and Romans to refer to parts of the Levant during the Persian and Hellenistic periods
            Syria Palaestina or Roman Palestine, a Roman province (135-390 CE), a province of the Roman Empire following merger of renamed Iudaea with Roman Syria
            Palaestina Prima, a Byzantine province in the Levant from 390 to ca. 636, comprising the Galilee and northern Jordan Valley
            Palaestina Secunda,
            a Byzantine province in the Levant from 390 to ca. 636, comprising the
            shoreline and hills of the Southern Levant (Judea and Samaria)
            Palaestina Salutaris alias Palestina Tertia, a Byzantine province established in the 6th century, covering the Negev and Transjordan

            Modern

            Jund Filastin (638 – 10th century), one of the military districts of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate province of Bilad al-Sham (Syria)
            Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem
            (1872-1917), also known as the “Sanjak of Jerusalem”, an Ottoman
            district commonly referred to as “Southern Syria” or “Palestine”. The
            district encompassed Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Hebron, Bethlehem and
            Beersheba.
            Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948), a geopolitical entity under British administration

            – Wikipedia

          5. “Philistia,

            a name used in the Bible to refer to a pentapolis in the Southern

            Levant, established by Philistines c.1175 BC and existing in various

            forms until the Assyrian conquest in the 8th century BC”
            Yup. No argument there.

            “Palaistinê or Palaestina names used by Greek and Romans to refer to parts of the Levant during the Persian and Hellenistic periods”
            NOPE!!
            In Greek:
            PHILISTIA – Φιλιστία

            PALESTINA – Παλαιστίνη

            Biblical scholars often trace the Hebrew name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth), from the Semitic root p-l-sh (Hebrew: פלש‎) which means to divide, go through, to roll in, cover or invade,[21] with a possible sense in this name as “migrant” or “invader”[22] is usually transliterated as Palestine in English and equated to Philistia, which is used in the Bible more than 250 times.[23] Other scholars mention a theory “proposed by Jacobsohn and supported by others, is that the name derives from the attested Illyrian locality Palaeste, whose inhabitants would have been called Palaestīnī according to normal grammatical practice”[24] The Greek word Palaistínē (i.e., Παλαιστίνη) is generally accepted to be a translation of the Semitic name for Philistia; however another term – Land of Phylistieim (Γη των Φυλιστιειμ, transliteration from Hebrew) – was used in the Septuagint, the second century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, to refer to Philistia.

            The rest of your post simply underlines and verifies what I am saying: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY SOVEREIGN ENTITY (let alone an Arab one) called “Palestine

          6. There were no “Palestinians” in the days of the Irgun. And the Jews didn’t “get” anything. They were forced to fight for it when attacked, in violation of international law which provided for a Jewish National Home in Mandatory Palestine.

            Now who do you allege LEGALLY owns land which you once again allege the Jews want to “steal”? By what law or legal process do you allege that that legal ownership came about?

          7. Sorry, that’s a false narrative. The true one is that the Palestinians have been in Palestine continuously for over ten thousand years under many name, rulers, and religions, far longer than anything called Jewish even existed, including the last two thousand years, when the invader European ZioNazis certainly weren’t, if ever.

          8. Seeing as there has NEVER in history been a sovereign “Palestinian state”; seeing as the term “Palestine” was invented by the Romans 2000 years ago; seeing as the Arabs themselves, in their own words, have denied the existence of “Palestine” or “Palestinian Arabs”, can you provide any FACTUAL basis for your post?

          9. I read it twice…with a magnifying glass, even. Not one single FGACT to support the idiotic contention that ” Palestinians have been in Palestine continuously for over ten thousand years under many name, rulers, and religions, far longer than anything called Jewish even existed”.

            Not one.

            Try posting the FACTS again.

          10. Why? Facts don’t work on savage anti-Semites like you. You would rather assault Arabs and steal their homes.

          11. Again you prove that you are blind to facts because you have to have a justification for the the savage European ZioNazi invasion and stealing of Palestine.

          12. No justification sought or needed. There was NEVER and “country” to “invade”.

          13. The Philistines emigrated from Crete. Are they the ancestors of the so called Palestinians or are the Arabs who conquered Jerusalem in 637 A.D.? Whose armies followed the Prophet Mohammad who was said to be a direct decendent of Ishmael, a son of Abraham.

            It can’t be both.

          14. Who cares about you silly interpretation of a history that covered a people under many names, rulers, and religions, far longer than anything called Jewish even existed, including the last two thousand years, when the invader European ZioNazis certainly weren’t, if ever.

            Remember, your Judaic kingdoms exist for only a few hundred years as only a small portion of the whole. Also, they were the same Semites as the other Arabs. so you’re building a very weak claim for the right of savage invasion of conquest and ethnic cleansing by European thugs of no demonstrable Semite ancestry.

          15. There is, of course, the small matter of standing international law, written in 1922, providing the legal claim, based, in the words of that law, on the historuc claim.

            But what matter the facts?

          16. So if we get a gang of European thugs together and decide that the land now belongs to the Cubans, it means you will go peaceably obeying international law?

          17. Ah! A breakthrough. You admit that the Jewish People have the right to return to their ancestral homeland based on international law. Now you want to discuss who may, or may not subscribe to international law, and under what circumstances.

          18. No, I was mocking your silly, erroneous claim of international law to justify the alien Ashkenazi country-stealers’ crimes against humanity.

          19. There you go again. When you cannot produce your own facts, you deny the undeniable, using the repeated “big lie”, until you hope that it sticks.

            Now where, when, and by whom was that tactic used in the past? Hmmm…….(let me give you a hint…..it starts with “G”).

          20. In other words you have no credible proof of the Palestinian’s continual presence there for the last 10,000 years.

          21. I gave you a search list, since I know you will sneer at anything I present.

            In other words, you can’t prove that the Arab Semites weren’t there for ten thousand years and that the European Ashkeanzi ever lived in Palestine before they invaded to steal the country.

          22. You have no credible proof that the Ashkeanzi Europeans ever lived in Palestine.

          23. No, the Zionist thugs were not given Palestine legally.

            Balfour Declaration (included in the Mandate)

            “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

            Note that the Zionists immediately violated emphasized condition and voided the agreement, which was void already because the Europeans had no right to give Arab land to a gang of European thugs.

          24. Please provide concrete examples with FACTUAL back-up of where and when the CIVIL or RELIGIOUS rights of any Arabs were violated.

            And the Mandate constitutes valid international law, whether you agree with it or not. The land that you claim was “given away” was NEVER “Arab land”. It was Ottoman land, which then became British controlled land as a result of the treaties following WW 1.

          25. Hehehehe! Are you telling me that you don’t understand political Zionism?

            Of course it is Arab land. they have been living on it for millennia under many name, rulers, and religions, far longer than anything called Jewish even existed, including the last two thousand years, when the invader European ZioNazis certainly weren’t, if ever.

          26. Arabs, (and Jews) have lived on land that had been ruled by Jews following their conquest over the Edomites, Canaanites, Jebusites, Phillistines, etc. Then, they lived on land that was Roman, Byzantine, Macedonian, Crusader, Turkish (Ottoman) in ownership. Never “Arab land”.

            Try again.

          27. Sorry, the people living there were all Arab Semites. Like all Zionists you are confused by the difference between the property of a people and the authority of the rulers.,

            Try again, my boy.

            This is fun! Watching you flail to create ground for the savage European country-stealers of Palestine and their vast floods of crimes against humanity…

            Over 750,000 people driven off their ancestral lands

            Over 600 Arab villages and towns BULLDOZED

            Ordered the attack on over 700,000 Arab Jews to drive them into conquered Palestine

          28. It seems I am not the one that is confused.

            PROPERTY:

            “a : something owned or possessed; specifically : a piece of real estate

            b : the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing : ownership

            c : something to which a person or business has a legal title

            Ownership, legal title, etc. all derive from the legal AUTHORITY (which was never “Arab”.) Nor did those living on what was finally Ottoman land actually OWN the property, which was, in fact owned by the state (see: Sultan) or absentee landlords.

            Keep trying though.

          29. Funny, you’re totally lost. Maybe this will help.

            How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it change?

            “[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally masha’a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable…Under the provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored…Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs…The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord…Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine.” Rashid Khalidi, “Blaming The Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens.”.

            http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html

          30. Exactly right.

            “The new LAW meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, ” AND, LIKE IT OR NOT, IT WAS THE LAW OF THE LAND.

            “The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord.” Because they never were LEGAL owners. They were serfs in a feudal system living (squatting) on land which LEGALLY belonged to others. The fellaheen were given the opportunity to LEGALLY own that land by the Ottoman government, but either through ignorance, or due to their hope to avoid conscription into the Sultan’s army or paying taxes (all provisions in the new LAW), they chose to bypass the LAW, and paid the LEGAL consequences when others, (Christian religious orders, Russian government, and Jews among them) LEGALLY purchased the land from the LEGAL owners.

            You seem to have a problem with LAWS that you don’t like.

          31. So, you cannot provide any FACTS, once again, to support what everyone can read are your lies.

            TICK!

    2. are you boycotting america, moving out of america, or supporting those who would advocate violence to revise american history?

  1. This article is the poster child of how to pretend to achieve peace, while achieving nothing. Sure it’ll make the authors feel good about themselves.

    It just goes around making milquetoast statements about peace this, and peace that. The authors refuse to confront basic reality of an open and deliberate land grab. Pretending that Palestinians just decided one morning to get up and start fighting is dishonest.

        1. What Tasha was implying is that all American’s who are descendents of immigrants have no legal right to occupy Native American land.

          All Americans who then claim Jews are illegally occupying Palestinian lands while they occupy Native American land are guilty of hypocrisy.

          1. Correct! That conflict was entirely the result of the Rothschild financed Zionist assault on the genuinely Semite indigenous people of Palestine.

          2. All Zionists using wrongs centuries in the past to justify the one they are doing now have admitted that they are uncaring violators of other people.

          3. “have admitted that they are uncaring violators of other people”
            Please post that “admission”.

          4. Now you going to pretend that these European Ashkenazi Zionist crimes against humanity bother you now?

            Over 750,000 people driven off their ancestral lands

            Over 600 Arab villages and towns BULLDOZED

            Ordered the attack on over 700,000 Arab Jews to drive them into conquered Palestine

          5. “Over 750,000 people driven off their ancestral lands”
            Lies!
            Here are my facts:
            Research reported by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, stated “the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, but that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.”

            “The Arab exodus from the villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews”
- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953

            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.
- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949

            “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.”
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949

            “Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees… while it is we who made them to leave… We brought disaster upon Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave… We have rendered them dispossessed… We have accustomed them to begging… We have participated in lowering their moral and social level… Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon… men, women and children – all this in service of political purposes…”
- Khaled al Azm, Syria’s Prime Minister after the 1948 war

            “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, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948

            “The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did.”
amal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, speaking to the United Nations Security Council. Quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23,1948,p.14

            “As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the [Arab Palestinian] people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property.” – bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957

            “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some 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.”
- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183

            “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”.
- Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, p. 25

          6. Sorry, that 3/4 million is settled history among historians on the nakba. Anybody can get on the Internet and see what a liar you are.

          7. No one is arguing that 700,000 Arabs left the area that was destined to become Israel. Some were in fact forcefully evicted. But as is documented, the vast majority left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

          8. Hehehehe!

            They would leave their homes without the murder, massacres and terror of the ZioNazi thug invaders intent of stealing their country?

            Note that this is just for the infamous day of the ZioNazi proclamation of country stealing…

            “On 14 or 15 May [1948], a 12-year-old girl was raped by two Haganah soldiers; there were also a number of attempted rapes. There was widespread institutional and private looting by Haganah and IZL [National Military Organization or Irgun] troops and Tel Aviv citizens who infiltrated the town, there was robbery on the roads by patrolling Jewish troops and there was widespread vandalisation of property. In genera, the inhabitants complained, they were ‘being incessantly molested.’

            “The looting was so bad that Chizik appealed directly to Ben-Gurion, who on 22 May ordered the IZL and the Haganah to obey Chizik’s instructions. A senior Kiryati officer, Zvi Aurbach, made a point of washing his hands of any responsibility for property in Jaffa. On 25 May, on official reported:

            “‘During the whole day I walked about the streets…I saw soldiers, civilians, military police, battalion police, looting, robbing, while breaking through doors and walls…’”

            Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 210-211.

          9. He was desperate for money after you ZioNazis stole his country, eh? You can cherry-pick all the absurd ZioNazi propaganda you want.

            The history is clear. Your thugs drove 3/4 million people from their homes by murder, massacres, and terror, then you bulldozed close to 600 of their villages and towns.

          10. So anyone that testifies counter to your false narrative is a prostitute. And anyone who supports your lies is a hand-on-the-bible saint. Well, that’s pretty convenient, isn’t it?

          11. Absolutely! People should check out your references and what the SOURCES actually are. You might as well post excerpts fro Mein Kampf, David Duke, and Louis Farrakhan.

          12. Page 2

            “The fact that there are these 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 and they must share in the solution of the problem,
- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948

            “The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954

            “The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.”
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948

            “[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949

            “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] …A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. …[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns… [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.””
- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz

            “the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision”
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

            “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.”
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31

            “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah (“The Secret Behind the Disaster”) by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952

          13. Page 3

            “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, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha’s successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951

            “Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals . . . declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations…. It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.”
- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

            “…our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents … Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families.”
The Haifa Workers’ Council bulletin, 28 April 1948

            “…the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country.”
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48

            “The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States’ opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.”
…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.”
- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948

            “One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC’s threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.”

            “The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa.”
- London Times, May 5, 1948

          14. Oh, I get it. This is the hasbara SOP of flooding with garbage when the ZioNazi con game fails.

          15. Nothing to do with hasbara. Pure, unadulterated objective facts based on the various journalistic sources of the day. read ’em and weep.

          16. What facts? That the ZioNazis worked hard at covering up their crimes against humanity?

          17. Not my fault that you always lie with false narratives and twisted facts. Be honest! Stop justifying savage crimes against humanity!

          18. Ah! Another tack. Please specify which “crimes against humanity” you are invoking, and what factual evidence do you have for your allegations.

          19. So, cannot specify which exact “crimes against humanity” you continue ranting about.

            Your list of “cannot’s” continues to grow, as any shred of your credibility fades into oblivion, further trampled by your repeated use of antisemitic epithets.

            A pitiful example of our failed educational system, which turns out scrawny parrots of hatefulness, rather than thinking brains, capable of learning.

          20. Page 4

            “Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
“We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”
- David Ben-Gurion, in Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish micro-state, with the stated goal of extermination.

            “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, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable”.
- by Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the article titled: “What We Have Learned and What We Should Do”, published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976

            “The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.”
- Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948

            “The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa.”
- London Times, May 5, 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 London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948

          21. Funny. Sheer ZioNazi propaganda to justify a vast flood of crimes against humanity and proclaiming the stealing of another people’s country, mendaciously calling it a “Declaration of Independence?.

          22. What part of the international journalistic evidence do you suggest is “propaganda”?

            “stealing of another people’s country”
            Once again, which “country” would that be? Why won’t you answer that question?

          23. So now ZioNazi propaganda becomes “international journalistic evidence” of what? ZioNazi propaganda?

            You mean that you don’t know that the country you ZioNazis stole have been called Palestine for thousands of years, as it mattered. It’s still the same country you European invaders stole.

          24. Now you are being an idiot. The quotes come from TIME magazine, Arab newspapers, and Arab testimony freely available on youtube.

            And your own post clearly notes the fact that there were areas, provinces, subsections of various empires since the Roman re-naming of Judea and Samaria, that were called “Palestine”, but NEVER ANY SOV EREIGN COUNTRY OR STATE by that term, EVER!!

          25. Hey, they all had the same ZioNazi con game for a source.

            Wow! How psychopathic you are! A people have to a government by your arbitrary definitions to be a people! What a typical ZioNazi con job! Just the kind of mendacity we would expect used to justify a savage country-stealing by European alien thug invaders!

          26. “they all had the same ZioNazi con game for a source.”
            Really?? Even the quoted ARAB!! leadership and ARAB newspapers?

            As for “arbitrary definitions”:
            ” peoples : a body of persons that are united by a common culture, tradition, or sense of kinship, that typically have common language, institutions, and beliefs, and that often constitute a politically organized group”
            http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/people

            The “Palestinians” were NEVER a “People”, and they never had a “country”.

          27. So you are agreeing now that the “invasion” by the Arab armies, was a clumsy attempt to look like they were protecting the people from the savagery of the ZioNazi thugs stealing their country.

            Sorry, all those Arabs shared a common culture and a common country. To whatever extent they didn’t doesn’t justify a bunch of alien ZioNazi thugs to come in and steal their country, their home from them.

          28. No one disputes that the Arabs constitute “a People”. Now what would you suggest is “their country”?

          29. By such a stupid question, you mean to imply that the Palestinians who have lived in Palestine for millennia under many rulers don’t have a country?

          30. Feel free to tell us all where the borders, capital, leader etc of this “country” are. We are waiting breathlessly to know

          31. Of course Israel declared its borders in its Declaration of Independence (accepting the UN recommendation). The combined Arab attack in 1948 erased those borders, and the Arabs have refused to negotiate mutually acceptable new borders in the wake of their repeated defeats resulting from their repeated aggressions.

          32. “Ordered the attack on over 700,000 Arab Jews to drive them into conquered Palestine”
            What idiocy are you trying to post here?

          33. Don’t see nothin’ about no “attack ordered” on anyone, anywhere.

            Try again.

          34. The Arab Jews didn’t want to come, so what do ZioNazis do when people won’t cooperate…

            Actually, the expulsion of the Arab Jews was another machination of the evil thug Ben-Gurion by which he planned to fool and terrorize the Arab Jews into Palestine to serve the vicious European ZioNazi invaders of Palestine as laborers and farmers. It was Ben-Gurion who ordered the Zionist assaults on the Arab Jews.

            Zionist crimes against the Jews
            http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2013/11/11/zionist-crimes-against-the-jews

            Zionist terror against the Jews
            http://www.inminds.co.uk/jews-of-iraq.html

            All planned and ordered by the evil thug David Ben-Gurion
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Plan

            Thanks for reminding us that the assault of the alien European Zionist Ashkenazi invaders was not just against the people of Palestine but against all the Arab Jews. Thanks for reminding us of the vast evil of the European ZioNazi thugs in forcing two Million Arab (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) people from their homes.

          35. That 3rd reference goes with the other two. did you read them yet. You might also look up the Lavon Affair to.

            Your reference just feeds back the ZioNazi leadership propagandizing. Big deal! the Arab Jew victims weren’t very sympathetic.

          1. True, the organizing and financing of the political European Zionist movement by the financial thug, Baron de Rothschild, was integral to the Zionist assault adn the “Arab-Israeli conflict”.

          2. Why is the U.N. important to you? it didn’t created the thug movement of Zionism or create the ZionNazi thugdom.

          3. Disregarding your antisemitic obscenities, you are at least correct that the UN is, and was, unimportant, and has, and had, nothing to do with this conflict.

          4. Silly little slur spewing boy! It’s you who’s the anti-Semite, since you are arguing for non-Semite Ashkeanzi Europeans stealing the homeland of the genuinely Semite Arabs!

    1. First, there were no “Palestinians”, until they were invented in 1964. Prior to that, there were “the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine, and the Palestinians”, a term referring specifically to the JEWS! of Mandatory Palestine.

      As for the Arabs, in fact they did “decide one morning to get up and start fighting”. The date was May 1, 1921, to be exact.

      1. Silly, nonsensical Zio-propaganda. The genuinely Semite indigenous people were living in Palestine for millennia before the European Ashkenazi country-stealers invader.

        1. Please identify the “country” that you allege was stolen, along with its borders, capital city, rulers, etc.

          1. Right. So, no “country” that you can identify.

            Since you have no facts for any of the hateful drivel you try to post, could you at least explain what drives your vitriolic, baseless hatred?

          2. Isn’t that rather stupid of you? You’re claiming that there was no land with the same people there all this time? You’re claiming that land and people can’t be a country? Hehehehe!

          3. People in a land can be a country, or a city, or, as in the case of the Middle east, an Empire.

            But no, there was no “land with the same people there all this time”. There was land with a series of different people, and different rulers, but the Jewish People are the ONLY ones who have been there continuously for 4000 years.

            But enough of my facts.

            I am asking you to back up your comment above about “country-stealers invader”.

            One more time, what “country”? (Of course there never was one, but I need everyone to clearly witness your empty, baseless, factless rhetoric.

          4. You are being silly again.The Arab Jews were only 2-4% of the Arabs living in Palestine over the last two thousand years, the Arabs who had been there over ten thousand years for longer than anything called Jewish ever existed.

            Another demonstration of how facts are meaningless to you is that you believe that non-Semite Europeans magically can invade a Semite country and seize itwithout it being country-stealing.

            Moreover, Judaism is a religion that people convert in and out of and cannot be the basis for a gang of thug converts to steal another people’s country.

          5. “The Arab Jews were only 2-4% of the Arabs living in Palestine over the last two thousand years,”
            And your point is…..?

            “Arabs who had been there over ten thousand years ”
            Of course, that depends on your definition of “. “Arab”. Ask some Arabs, and they will tell you they are descendants of Shem, the son of Noah. Of course then you and they, have to explain the term “Arab” (as in “out of Arabia.”)

            “magically can invade a Semite country ”
            And once again I invite you to identify that alleged “country” which never existed. While you are at it, please explain when and how the “invasion” occurred.

            “Judaism is a religion”
            Absolutely true. But the Jews (as in people coming from Judea, like the Arabs came from Arabia) are also a Nation, and a People. There are members of the Jewish Nation and People who are atheists, as well as agnostics, etc. The Jewish Nation is not based on the Jewish RELIGION. (But of course, you knew that!)_

          6. How funyy! You were trying to justify the savage European ZioNazi invasion on the basis of residence of Arab Jew among far more numerous Arabs of other religions.

            Now you want to play your silly semantic games again that demonstrate that you are a psychopath unable to see PEOPLE as having value (unless by your arbitrary definition, they are Jewish.).

            Sorry, your confusion between a religion, a people, a nation, and a country is easily recognized as studied mendacity for justifying savage invasions accompanied by crimes against humanity, such as these..

            Over 750,000 people driven off their ancestral lands

            Over 600 Arab villages and towns BULLDOZED

            Ordered the attack on over 700,000 Arab Jews to drive them into conquered Palestine

          7. “You were trying to justify the savage European ZioNazi invasion on the basis of residence of Arab Jew among far more numerous Arabs of other religions.”
            Not at all. There was no “invasion”. International law written in 1922 called on the countries and peoples of the world to work to encourage and support Jewish “close settlement of the land” between the sea and the Jordan River. This international law was written explicitly stating that it was based on the historic rights of the Jewish People.

            The rest of your increasingly agitated ranting is simply disconnected idiotic drivel.

          8. Of course, there was an invasion of ruthless Zionist thugs from Europe. Don’t you know what political Zionism is all about?

          9. But note you Zionist blew it away immediately because of what political Zionist is, the seizing of a country and driving out the indigenes. Besides, it was never “international law” except to greedy, predatory Zionists

            So it’s hilarious you calling anybody refuting your cacophonous nonsense “disconnected idiotic drivel”, simply because you lack all logical facilities.

          10. “the seizing of a country”
            Once again, which “country” was “seized”?

            “Besides, it was never “international law””
            Much as you might want to wish it away, the unanimous vote by The League of Nations did indeed constitute international law. And its validity today was underwritten and underlined by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter.

          11. Wow! are you stupid! Palestine was seized from the indigenous people by the invading ZioNazi thugs.

            Sorry, read that part of the mandate over again. It did not gift Palestine to the European ZioNazi thugs. It said the Jews could live in Palestine only if they behaved themselves. But I can understand why you are so desperate to manufacture a justification for a vile country-stealing.

          12. “It said the Jews could live in Palestine only if they behaved themselves. ”
            Please cut and paste the clauses in the Mandate for Palestine that support your allegation.

  2. Beautifully said! Thank you for writing this. If we UCLA students cannot learn to understand each others’ perspectives, how can we ever hope and dream that those directly involved in the conflict will achieve that goal? This attitude and approach is where peace begins.

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