April 25, 2007
1. Geographically, Israel is not a separate entity from Palestine. When people refer to Israel they are referring to 77% of the land of Palestine, which Zionist leaders declared to be a Jewish state in 1948, asserting in their Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel that the sovereign authority in this region was not everybody who lived there but rather "the Jewish people." The remainder of Palestine consists of a relatively large area called the West Bank (presently under harsh military occupation by Israel) and a very small area called the Gaza Strip.
2. From 1947 to 1949 Zionist military forces, by means of violence and the threat of violence, caused about 750,000 of the 900,000 non-Jewish Palestinians living in what is now Israel to leave; most entered refugee camps. Israel forced more Palestinians into refugee camps when it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The non-Jewish Palestinian population in 1999 numbered approximately 7.8 million, of whom 4.9 million were refugees scattered in 59 refugee camps mainly in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. About one million non-Jewish Palestinians remain in Israel, constitute 1/5 of the total Israeli population, and are, in law and in practice, second-class citizens with severely restricted rights compared to Jews.
3. The chief demand of Palestinians is the right to return to the land (now called Israel) where they (or their parents in the case of children born in refugee camps) were born. Israel refuses to let them return, in violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.")
4. Israel's Zionist leaders deny Palestinians their right of return on the grounds that Israel must be a Jewish state that must - by definition - have a predominantly Jewish majority and be a state in which only "the Jewish people" are sovereign. This is necessary, say Zionists, because all non-Jews are, deep down and unalterably, anti-Semitic; therefore Jews cannot live safely as equals among non-Jews, but require an exclusively Jewish state of their own.
5. Prominent Jews opposed a Jewish state. In January 1946, in a reply to the question of whether refugee settlement in Palestine demanded a Jewish state, Einstein told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry,
"The State idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with narrow-minded and economic obstacles. I believe it is bad. I have always been against it."
6. Zionist leaders don't fight anti-Semitism; they use it to strengthen their power over ordinary Jews. For example, in 1991 Israel tried to get all other nations to deny entry to Jews from the former Soviet Union fleeing anti-Semitism-an anti-Semitic policy if ever there was one.
References:
1. Palestinian Refugees:
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, by Benny Morris (who is pro-Zionist);
2. Zionist views on anti-Semitism:
The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl (Zionism's founder) 1896;
3. Einstein and origin of Israel:
What Price Israel? by Alfred M. Lilienthal;
5. Israeli discrimination against non-Jews:
The Case for Palestine, An International Law Perspective, by John Quigley (Prof. of Law, Ohio State Univ.);
6. Hope for a peaceful solution:
Sharing the Land of Canaan, by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh
[For more information contact
John Spritzler, spritzler @ comcast.net]
Submitted to this site by the author