07.11.11
Palestinian issue
Palestinian issue
Recently “VPK”[1] published a lengthy interview which the correspondent Natalie Bubnova took from a Senior Research Fellow of the international Carnegie Foundation Mr. Nathan Brown. The issue under discussion was war and peace in the Middle East. The conversation was highly politically correct, the sage was speaking solidly, smoothly, without anger and partiality. "Domination of the security considerations in the Israeli political discourse… Internationalization of the diplomatic effort around the conflict… Institutional construction in Palestine… The issue is being discussed on a highly emotional, so to speak existential level …" Ms. Bubnova delicately dittoed to her interlocutor and only once took the liberty to ask an excessively emotional (which of course is excusable for a lady) question: "Why couldn’t the Israelis who did not have their own state for 2,000 years understand the drive of another people to be independent?"
Really, why such callousness, such indifference to the “national aspirations” of another people? I could not get intelligible response to the asked question in Mr. Brown’s words. I will venture to do it for him. Without arcane dissertations, without attempts to rise to the “existential level”.
For starters we’ll break the issue into several simple components: When did the “Palestinian people” emerge? Which ancient chronicles preserved first mentions of it? Where the thesaurus of the “Palestinian language” can be purchased? Where can “Palestinian folktales” be read? “Palestinian songs” be heard, “Palestinian folkdances” be enjoyed? What city was once upon a time the capital of the “Palestinian state”? And if an issue of the “liberation of Palestine” occurred, who and when seized it? And what were the borders of this “state” as of the moment of the “aggression” and “occupation”?
These are very simple questions. What is complex and inexplicable to me personally is why educated and apparently decent people for years on end repeat and multiply a clear and in substance inciting stupidity?
Palestine (a strip of land, 60-80 km-wide, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River) is a geographic concept. Same as Balkans, Scandinavia or the Caucasus. A word combination “Palestinian people” is as wild a nonsense as a “person of the Caucasus nationality”, the “Scandinavian language” or the “Mosque of the Notre Dame of Paris”. A hundred thousand Slavs, former USSR citizens, who resettled to Israel together with their Jewish husbands and wives, have exactly the same reason to call themselves “Palestinians” as the Circassians, Druses, Bosnians and Greeks… Even the very word “Palestine” has nothing to do with the Semites (Jews and Arabs). The Romans who conquered this region in the beginning of the Common Era called their new province after the Philistines (“Plishtim” in Hebrew), ancient and by that time extinct people of seafarers and merchants.
There is no, and had never been any “Palestinian language”. As for the Arabs residing west of the Jordan River, they speak the same Arabic dialect (called “Syrian” by the philologists) as the Arabs east of the Jordan River, in the Kingdom of Jordan and the Arabs of Syria and Lebanon. Even natives of Kostroma and Belgorod have greater differences in the pronunciation than the so-called “Palestinians” and the other Arabs in the region. There has never been an Arab “Palestinian state” separate from the other Arab states. Since the times the Arab vanquishers came to the Middle East (VIIth century of the Common Era) and up through the conquest of the region by the Seljuk Turks (1071) the territories of the present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel were parts of a huge Arab Caliphate with the capital in Damascus and later (since 762) in Baghdad. If we do not dive so deep in the bottomless expanses of the centuries we may briefly state that during the recent four hundred years (1517 through 1917) the Palestinian territory was part of the mighty Osman (Turkish) Empire. There was no Arab state there for quite a long time.
In the years of its bloom the Osman Empire occupied a huge territory from Vienna on the Danube to Kamenets-Podolsky on the Dniester. It included areas with marvelous nature and wonderful air which are world-class resorts now, fertile soils in the Danube plain and succulent grazing lands in the Balkan and Carpathian piedmonts; a shred of barren stony semi-desert called “Palestine” was of no great interest to anybody. In 1695 Adriani Rilandi, a traveler, cartographer and philologist, visited Palestine and put together a detailed description of the land he saw. The country ruined by the endless succession of wars and invasions was in a total desolation. A small Muslim (which is not always the same as “Arab”) population was engaged in seminomad livestock-breeding; in the cities (or rather tiny villages) lived the Jews and Christians. The great city of Jerusalem degenerated into a miserable town with the population of 5,000 (two third Jewish). Nazareth had 700 people, almost all Christians. Gaza had about 550 people, half Jewish and half Christian. The only “city” with the majority Muslim population was Shekhem (Nablus) where as many as 120 Muslims lived.
How did this handful of people turned into four million “Palestinian refugees” plus 2.5 million dwellers of the so-called “West Bank”, plus one million "Palestinians" in Gaza, plus 1.5 million Arabs with Israeli passports? Very simple.
In 1917 not only the Russian Empire collapsed. With deafening crack crumbled also the Osman Empire and on its ruins arose dozens of new states. The Palestine territory was snatched by Great Britain which crushed (incidentally, with the participation of the Jewish volunteer battalion) the Turkish army on that front. November 2, 1917 the British Foreign Minister handed to the eminent Jewish banker Rothschild a document which entered the history of the XXth century as the “Balfour declaration”. Why to Rothschild? Maybe because the Rothschild banking house provided London with multimillions-worth war loans… Be that as it may but the document stated: “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”.
Subsequently, in 1918-1922 principles of the "Balfour declaration" were confirmed by the major world powers and secured in the corresponding resolution of the League of Nations. England got the “mandate” to govern Palestine on condition of creating a Jewish state west of the Jordan River and of an Arab state east of it. The League of Nations resolutions gave a powerful push to the development of the Zionist movement and mass Jewish repatriation to Palestine. By the beginning of the 1940’s there were 450 thousand Jews there, by 1947 about 650 thousand. Together with the Jewish population the Arab population of Palestine was also sweepingly growing. It was growing for the same reason that after the people move into the empty house the cockroaches multiply there.
Initially the Jewish settlements and settlers were tasty targets for robbing attacks by the Arab gangs. Later, as the correlation of forces was changing and Jewish pogroms stopped being a scot-free entertainment not unlike the game of paintball, Jewish settlers in Palestine turned for the Arabs into generous buyers of food and rich employers. There was plenty of work, even more pay, the country was being restored after many centuries of desolation, and Jewish organizations did not spare money. Compared with hopeless poverty in which the Arab poor vegetated, Palestine being revitalized by the Jews "flowed with milk and honey". Tens then hundreds of thousands of the Arab “labor migrants” flew into the country. In the first 20 years of the British “mandate” about 400 thousand Arabs came to Palestine. By the time the state of Israel was declared over 900 thousand Arabs were already in Palestine.
And while the first Jewish settlers, the rifle in one hand and the plow in the other, were turning the desert into blooming garden, great changes were occurring in the larger world. Automobile turned to be the main means of transportation out of a luxury, aircraft turned a powerful instrument of war out of a funny attraction, and the light bulb became a necessary element of any human dwelling. All these required huge amounts of energy carriers, and oil became the most important one. Big oil was in America, in the USSR but the Europeans had to either remain on the roadside of the progress or to get friendly with the Arabs. And they did get friendly.
In 1947 the United Nation Organization, in violation of its own Statute which confirmed the validity of all League of Nations mandates, decided to subdivide Palestine once again. Now, it was decided in addition to Trans-Jordan (east bank of the Jordan River) to make a gift to the Arabs of most of the habitable Palestine (I do not count the then absolutely desolate Negev Desert in the south of the country). That was the way the international community decided to show its “commiseration of the Holocaust survivors”. Not having a realistic possibility to object the leaders of the Zionist movement accepted it. The Arabs zonked by their drastically grown grandeur had imprudence to reject the generous gift and demanded all of it to themselves. The entire Palestine from the sea to the Jordan River.
What followed is known. On May 14, 1948 the formation of the Jewish state of Israel was declared, and in the night on the 15th of May the Egyptian aviation carried first bomb strikes. Regular armies of the five Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq) plus armed formations of the Palestinian Arabs attacked the newborn state. And were severely beaten. The success, however, was limited; the Israeli Defense Force performed miracle but this “miracle” had its geographic borders.
I have on my shelf a small book with a blue paper cover. I like it very much and protect it like the apple of my eye. This is a political atlas of the world. Signed into print July 10, 1980. The publisher was the Main Geodetics and Cartography Directorate at the USSR Council of Ministers. Page 112, "Palestine". It has plenty of various lines: "borders of the State of Israel under the resolution of UN General assembly of 29 November, 1947", "armistice demarcation line under the agreements of 1949 and 1950", "territory of the Arab state" (just so – nameless "Arab state", not at all the "Palestinian state"!)
In 1980 the atlas compilers considered as legal "internationally-recognized" borders of Israel the line where Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beit Lehem belong to the Arabs and the territory of the Jewish state is a band, 15-20km wide, along the sea shore.
I hope the “VPK” readers do not need to be reminded the range of fire for the guns of most common division artillery, what is the field-book defense depth of the infantry regiment, division and corps; they will understand without my explanations that in a case of war such "15-kilometer state" would right away entirely convert into a field of battle. The “Armistice demarcation line” only slightly (by 10-15-20 km) increased the operational depth of the front country.
But the most interesting thing is that Judea and Samaria (what is customary to call in the newspapers the “West bank”), the very territory where the "Palestinian people" is ostensibly dreaming to create their sovereign state, the very same Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin which are now the main centers of the so called "Palestinian Autonomy" are colored the same color as … Jordan! But two little red spots denoting the "territory of the Arab state" are somewhere else on the map.
Yes, it was the Jordanian army that occupied the "West Bank" territories during the military operation of 1948-1949. Occupied without any, even the minimal legal grounds. Occupied IN SPITE OF the UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November, 1947. But this circumstance not even a bit confused the map compilers, i.e., the Main Geodetics and Cartography Directorate at the USSR Council of Ministers. Does not confuse them even in 1980, i.e., 16 years after the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed and was recognized by Moscow as the "only plenipotentiary representative of the Palestinian people".
Please don’t tell me that “the technician girl confused the paints”. I lived at that time as did you[2]. Even the wall newspaper of a knitting factory could not be hanged without the party bureau approval, and it is simply laughable to talk about independent actions of “girls” in the official publication of a political atlas…
I hope that most attentive readers have already been surprised by the words “16 years after”. 16 years prior to 1980 was year 1964 but the "Israeli aggression" when the Zionist occupiers banished the so-called "Palestinians" from their "primordial land" happened in June of 1967. However, there is no error here. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed exactly in 1964. The same year when the so-called "Palestinian territories" not only on the map published in the USSR but in actuality were under the military and administrative control of the Arabs (Jordan), and there was not a single Israeli soldier, not a single Jewish settlement there. What did PLO intend to liberate? And from who? Could it be - "Palestine" from the Jordanians?
There is no need to guess. The Palestinian Charter adopted the same year 1964 provides in its Article 24 an absolutely clear answer: "The Palestine Liberation Organization has no intention to declare the national sovereignty in the territory of the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom" (the official name of Jordan). Without the slightest sentimentalizing the PLO declared that it intended to “liberate” Israel of the Jews: "The situation in Palestine in 1947 and the creation of the state of Israel are absolutely illegal regardless of the passing of time... The Balfour Declaration, Palestine mandate and everything based on them should be treated as illegal and invalid" (Articles 19 and 20 of the Palestinian Charter). The existence in Palestine of a Jewish State within ANY borders, even on a tiny shred allocated to Israel by the UN resolution of 1947 was not to the liking of the so-called "Palestinians". The then Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee Ahmad Shukeiri stated publicly: "After our victory we will help the surviving Jews to return to where they came from. But I doubt anyone will survive ".
Of course, at that time PLO could have stated whatever it wished. There were not many who paid attention to it. It was created as an insurance policy on the principle "store is no sore’, for the case if the main Kremlin’s clients (Egypt and Syria) won’t be able to fulfill the assigned task. They did indeed not perfofm, twice at that: in 1967 and 1973. Could not handle despite thousands of Soviet tanks, military aircraft and missiles which were being reliably provided for the arming and next rearming of the Arab armies. And only after these defeats and after the departure of Egypt from the Soviet influence orbit the dirty “bladder” called PLO began inflating to the full.
Shuffling several unsuccessful candidates, in charge of the PLO was put in 1969 “the devoted friend of the Soviet people, fervent fighter against the international imperialism” Comrade Yasser Arafat. It was "an apple from the apple tree" known and memorable to many. On his mother’s side Arafat was a relative of the Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husseini: a bestial judeophob, a great friend of the Fascist Germany. 1941 through 1945 the Mufti lived in Europeе where he was “honored” to meet with Hitler, Himmler and Ribbentrop; he personally frequented the Soviet prisoners-of-war camps appealing to the Muslims to join the so-called “eastern legions” of the Wehrmacht, he took part in the forming of an SS-division manned with Bosnian Muslims, promised (although unsuccessfully) to create under the auspices of Germany an Arab army for the fight against the British and the "Zionist lair" in Palestine. Having miraculously escaped the tribunal of the Nazi criminals al-Husaini fled to the Middle East where in the series of other “achievements” he set up the murder in 1951 of the Jordanian King Abdullah bin al-Hussein who, in the Mufti’s view, was insufficiently active in the struggle against Israel...
Yasser Arafat, contrary to his renowned relative, was no religious bigot, his genuine passion were money and power. The most minimal estimate of the "Palestinian refugees" leader’s personal fortune begins on a mark of 3 billion dollars, the maximal goes off scale at the mark 50 billion. And what nobody will ever learn is how much stolen money the Fuehrer of the Palestinian revolution spent bribing progressive “left” journalists and European politicians. Only the final result is known: the ringleader of the world-largest terrorist organization, agent provocateur and embezzler became a political figure on the world scale. He was received by the Pope, Breznev exchanged kisses with him, he was applauded in the General Assembly and near the end of his career he was handed the Nobel Peace Prize.
The success of the PLO which he headed was much more moderate. A Greek myth about King Midas says that whatever the king touched converted to gold. In real history whatever the Soviet leaders tackled turned into trash. After the Arab armies suffered in 1967 a crushing defeat in the “six-day war” Israel took under her control the entire Palestine, and Arafat’s guerillas had to flee to Jordan. There they quickly and with certainty, as a cuckoo chick, began forming their armed “state within a state”. The Jordanian brother-Arabs had enough patience for three years: in September of 1970 the tanks of the Hashemite Kingdom squashed (not only figuratively but literally) the PLO terrorist bases. The international community did not even flicker an eyebrow as this time the Arabs, not the Israelis were killing the "Palestinians".
After the “black September" Arafat with his band fled to Lebanon where they managed in a few years to convert paradise into hell: a prosperous, rich, peaceful country, “the Middle-Eastern Switzerland” as Lebanon was then called became the arena of a bitter multiannual fight of everybody against everybody. The invasion of the Syrian and then Israeli armies forced Arafat to flee to “the other and” of the Arab world, to a remote Tunisia. The Tunisian authorities provided asylum for the Fuehrer of the virtual "Palestine" but did not allow him to have free scope. And it appeared at the time that the abhorrent farce with the so-called "liberation of the Palestinian people" is approaching it finale.
Alas, the quiet in the incandescence of the confrontation did not last. Rephrasing an old Russian saying it may be said that “Good luck often brings bad luck"[3]. The collapse of the “Socialist camp” and then the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the major PLO sponsor overwhelmed everybody and apparently should have drawn a line under the protracted multiannual conflict. But those who saw it this way (by hard adventure the then Israeli leaders were among them) did not appropriately evaluate the measure of Arafat and Co’s “political flexibility” and the potential of a new, incomparably more energetic sponsor.
The aggressive Islamic fundamentalism whose conversion into a factor in the global politics was manifested by the “Islamic revolution” in Iran (1979) got in the end of the XXth century a powerful support in the form of a river of the petrodollars; billions flew into the burses of most reactionary, fiendish Arab regimes. Strictly speaking, these dollars mostly did not reach the “burses” and converted along the way into the mountains of the modern arms, into training camps for terrorists, into the progressive newspapers, into video-cameras of even more progressive TV channels, into multi-thousand marches of “anti-globalists”, “greens”, fighters for saving the seals and for the rejection of the nuclear energetics.
Incidentally, it was not only a matter of the billions. The Soviet Union had no less money and much more modern armaments than the Islamists. There was no motivation. In those very much forgotten times when the fight for the destruction of Israel was directed from Moscow and the poor and downtrodden Arab peasant had no idea why he personally needed the “Socialist choice” and the fight against the “world imperialism”; in a battle he threw away the weapon at the first opportunity. The Islamist fundamentalists gave the motivation, the idea, real, pierced with the blazing hate. And the idea which took possession of feeble minds becomes a terrible force; if it was unthinkable to suggest the appearance of “kamikaze” in the Egyptian or Syrian armies, today the “living bombs”, suicidal terrorists ready to tear themselves into pieces for the sake of murdering several Jews became the everyday reality in the Middle East.
What is the idea? What these people strive for (“jihad” in-Arabic means strive)? These questions are difficult or rather impossible to answer in a smooth, all-reconciling way. But without reviewing this completely politically-incorrect subject we will not understand anything in the source and substance of the middle-eastern conflict and we’ll be left repeating well-intended stupidities about the "strive of the Palestinian people to independence…"
As anything else, the treatment of “infidels” is regulated in the world of Islam by the will of Allah transmitted though Mohammed and written in the holy Quran: "O you who believe! Fight those People of the Book who do not believe in Allah, nor in the Latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection”.
"People of the Book" are Judeans and Christians (Islam’s treatment of heathens is incomparably hostile; they do not have any rights in the Islamic world including the right to life). The specific details of the Qur’an prescribed humiliation of the “people of the Book” and imposition of the tribute are set based on the principle of the precedent. i.e., everything should be done as was doing the Messenger Mohammed himself and as first Caliphs were doing. The norms developed and codified in the VIIth century define the conditions of a peculiar contract (“dhimma” in Arabic) which the Muslim community concludes with those “people of the book” obstinately not willing to join Islam (they are called “dhimmies”).
First of all, dhimmies must unconditionally accept the authority of the Muslims and as a most reliable guarantee of their surrender the dhimmies have no right to bear and keep arms. As a payment for the gift of life each dhimmi had to pay a head tax called "jizyah". Under the first pious caliphs levying of jizyah was done exactly as prescribed in Qur’an: each dhimmi brought in the tribute personally and at that got hit on the face or the nape (not strongly, not to mutilate but just as the humiliation prescribed by the Law). Subsequently, alas, the faith weakened in Muslims’ hearts and the payment of jizyah became a regular collection of the collective tax from the entire dhimmi community; a nice old custom of the ritual slap on the face was forgotten.
Of course, this was just a beginning of the Taxes and humiliations. If the true believer allowed a dhimmi to work his former plot of land he had to submit part of the harvest; this tax was called “haraj”, its size was determined depending on the local conditions. The dhimmies also paid higher road and customs taxes than Muslims. Speaking with the true believer the dhimmi had to lower eyes to the ground and only answer the questions; he was prohibited on pain of death to enter a mosque or touch a Muslim woman; dhimmi’s residence must have been lower and poorer in the external decoration than Muslim residences. Dhimmi was considered impure creature so he was banned from riding noble animals (camels and horses); he was allowed to ride donkeys or mules but had to dismount in the presence of a Muslim in order not to be higher than the true believer. In the strictest Muslim communities dhimmies were prohibited from leaving home because the rainwater could wash away their vile sweat and bring it to the threshold of true believers’ houses…
All these tiny inconveniences pale into insignificance compared with this one: dhimmi’s testimonies were not admissible in court. This rule had very serious consequences. Robbed, beaten, dishonored dhimmi had no right to protect himself (and did not have weapons for this); under the logics of the “contract” he had to be protected by the just Islamic court. But his testimony (as well as the testimonies of other dhimmies) was worth nothing. The only way to reach justice was to find two Muslims who would agree to be witnesses for his defense in court. Yes, it is a theoretical possibility as Allah ordered to observe justice, to protect widows and orphans. In real life, however, the dhimmi turned out to be in a situation when, first, some bandits “tensed” him and then the other bandits racked money from him for his “defenses”.
In such conditions, under such laws and “customs” the Judeans who did not want to turn Muslims lived thirteen centuries. Endless succession of Muslim generations (Arabs, Persians, and Turks) used to see a Jew as a humiliated, miserable, feeble third-rate creature. The search for new methods of humiliating the detestable dhimmies became something like a national sport. In the middle of the XXth century the Yemeni Jews were forced to clean, including on Saturday, feces and offal in the slaughterhouses and clean up communal toilets; they could leave their quarter only barefooted; the special law of 1677 was valid prohibiting the Jews to cover their heads in the presence of the Muslims (the demand not only contrary to the Judaic canons but simply murderous in Yemen’s climate).
Why have these rules been working only till the middle of the XXth century? No, not at all because after that the Yemeni Arabs appreciated those humanistic ideas trumpeted today by the representatives of the "Palestinian autonomy" dressed in magnificently tailored European suites from the UN podium. It is simply that the State of Israel emerged in 1948 and next year evacuated the entire Yemeni Jewish community. Ultimately the Yemeni rulers took ransom from the Jews: separately for each male, separately for each child and separately for each copy of Torah which the Jews carried. After the Yemeni sheiks got their money Egypt closed the Suez Canal for the Israeli navigation so Israel ruined by the war had to take out 48 thousand Yemeni Jews by air.
Didn’t we digress from the main subject of this article? Not a bit. We are talking exactly about it, about these very “national aspirations of the Palestinian people" which heartless Israelis do not want to satisfy. In the view of Islamic fundamentalists the State of Israel is a filthy boodle of rebelled dhimmies, oathbreakers subject to the execution, oathbreakers who broke the “dhimma” concluded by true believers with their ancestors 13 centuries ago.
And what is more, these rebelled slaves set up their "Zionist entity" on the lands which erstwhile were part of Dar el-Islam (literally the “land of submission”), i.e., were at the mercy of the state of the Muslims. In the face of such awful abuse of the God-given order the only strive of a true believer may be what the translation of the word “strive” into Arabic is, jihad.
An adherent of the fundamentalist Islam cannot agree with the existence within the Dar-el-Islam of a state of the rebelled dhimmies in any, even microscopic bounds: no way and never, at any price. Which HAMAS leadership demonstrably confirm by their actions. How many times did representatives of the European and American progressive community ask them, implore them to mumble a couple of words about the “recognition of the right of Israel to exist”? It would appear to be no problem. “Spit to the side and kiss the villain’s hand”, and the money from the humanitarian funds will flow as a river into the HAMAS burse. No! The proud warriors of Islam adamant, and from the viewpoint of their REAL aspirations they are absolutely right.
They are likewise right when they honestly inform the world community that in case the water, electric power, food and gasoline deliveries from Israel stop, a “humanitarian catastrophe” will happen in the Gaza strip. How can it be otherwise? The Gaza strip is a seashore band, 45 km long and 7-8 km wide. In Brazil it would be a beach. A million people scrimmaged on this “beach”. There are no jobs and cannot be. The main economic activity is distribution, redistribution and syphoning off the freebee money coming from outside. An interesting question is: what may the term “independence” mean under such circumstances? How can the dependent be independent? And what would change to the better after the official declaration of the "independent Palestine"? Would a breadfruit tree hung with the ready-to-eat bread loafs grow up on the beach? Or is it assumed that Israel is supposed to take it upon herself the ailment of the "sovereign Hamastan"?
The conflict between Israel and international Islamic extremism is not an argument over the land understood as a “real property”, as economic resource. The Arabs have more than enough land. The combined territory of 17 major Arab states (not counting minuscule Persian Gulf emirates and the countries with a mixed population) is 10.5 million square kilometers. This is slightly larger than the entire Europe from the Urals to Portugal, from Norway to Greece. The combined territory of the Judea, Samaria and Gaza strip is nine hundredth of one percent (!) of these boundless expanses. Is it really that the Arab world cannot do without one more shred of a stony semidesert with no oil and gas and even the drinking water?
The conflict has nothing to do with the struggle of the "Palestinian people" which never existed for the creation of a sovereign national state. There are no "Palestinians"; there are the Arabs, and the Arab people implemented its "right of national self-determination" (which, incidentally, nowhere provided for except in Lenin’s writings) by forming 23 (twenty three) sovereign states, and this is the absolute record deserving the Guinness Records book. The formula "two states for two peoples" which is as grave as an owl is discussed nowadays is a hypocritical lie or a doltish ignorance. Not “two for two” but the 24th one for the Arabs at a price of unavoidable in the future destruction of a single state of the Jewish people.
The real aim of the so-called “Palestinians”, i.e., the community of Islamic terrorist organizations funded from the sources outside Palestine (currently the Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabian monarchs are fighting for the role of the main sponsor, therefore the real master) is the destruction of the State of Israel and banishment of surviving Jews (if any remain after the military defeat) directly into the Mediterranean. All talks about any “boundaries” and “change land for peace” are undertaken mostly to deceive those “useful idiots” in the West who passionately desire to be deceived (i.e., throw to the wolves the only democratic state in the Middle East). A second goal of the talks about returning to the borders of 1967 is a quite understandable and reasonable desire to create optimum conditions for the deployment of the Arab forces and breakthrough to the sea.
The problem of Arab refugees (to the extent it is not falsified) is quite resolvable. The experience does exist, and a huge one. After the end of the Second World war millions of people changed, and not always voluntarily, the country of residence. Who remembers it today? Who can right offhand name the exact number of the Poles moved into Poland from the USSR, and the Ukrainians moved from Poland to the USSR, Finns forced to leave their homes on the Karelian Isthmus, and Romanians and Hungarians who changed their country of residence and citizenship in the process of Transylvania transfer? We’ll better keep silence about millions of the Germans banished from their native homes. What has been has gone, everything settled down, it enters nobody’s head to turn these issues of the times long gone into a major world problem. The petrodollars in hundreds of billions that poured on the denizens of Arabia are quite sufficient to decently accept, place and provide jobs for their consanguineous and coreligious brothers; isn’t it what the holy Qur’an teaches?
In real terms 500 to 600 hundred thousand Arab refugees left the territory of Palestine which the Arabs themselves in 1947-1949 plunged into the abysm of war. Maybe a bit more. In any case this number is less than the number of the Jews who fled to Israel to avoid continuous persecution and humiliation they were subjected to in the Muslim countries of their previous residence. So the Jews do not owe anything to the Arabs. An ordinary transfer occurred, the population exchange, and nobody in Israel charged the departing Arabs ransom for each copy of Qur’an. Moreover, four years after the victory in the war of 1947-1949 Israel began paying monetary compensation to the Palestinian Arabs for the property lost during the war. You of course will not believe it but Israel even paid 45 million marks to the Germans who lost their property in Palestine in the World war (and they lost it because the British authorities exiled them from the theater of the military operations).
The faery numbers of the "Palestinian refugees" included currently in the reports of UN bureaucrats are derived as a result of various and equally shameless cheating. First, contrary to any legal norms and common sense with the “refugees” are included not only those who fled but their children and grandchildren born abroad. Second, among the 1948 refugees are included Arabs who lived in Palestine over two years. To make it clearer, imagine the situation where the children and grandchildren of a Gastarbeiter who worked two and a half years in Russia demand the “right of return to Moscow”. The last and the main, the more refugees, the more money can be siphoned off from their upkeep, and this upkeep is not cheap and apparently not bad: the natural (maybe this word should be put in the quotation marks?) population growth in the "Palestinian refugee camps" is among the world-largest; with such grows the population of Russia would be now half a billion…
In the Middle East, in the ancient land of Palestine is running the frontline, the forefront of the fight of Civilization (you can call it “European”, “Western”, “white” – it is not important, everyone understand what is meant) against the bloody medieval barbarism. Islamic fundamentalists realize that raising the green banner over the destroyed Jerusalem they would inflict such a blow on Civilization after which its willpower would be finally broken. I agree, it sounds somewhat pompous. But this is the truth. And it is a very inconvenient truth as it puts before each government and each man an inconvenient question what side he is on. There is no desire to answer this question; it is uncomfortable to think about it. But the “ostrich position” did not free anybody of the need to solve the problem. And it better be solved now, while the frontline is still far from Moscow.
[1] Военно-Промышленный курьер (Military-Industrial Courier)
[2] Of course this is intended for a Russian reader
[3] The original Russian saying is "Bad luck often brings good luck"
