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<h1 class="title">The moral travesty of Israel seeking Arab, Iranian
money for its alleged Nakba</h1>
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<div class="stamp">Jan. 15, 2019 <br>
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<div class="authorClass">By: Ramzy Baroud - <font size="-2"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=782267">http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=782267</a><br>
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<div style=""><span style="font-style: italic;"><a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Ramzy Baroud is a journalist,
author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is
The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story.">Ramzy Baroud</a> is a
journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest
book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story.<br>
<br>
</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;"><font size="+3"><span
style="font-size: 11pt;">The game is afoot. Israel, believe it
or not, is demanding that seven Arab countries and Iran </span><a
href="https://www.jns.org/israel-to-officially-demand-250-billion-from-arab-countries-which-expelled-jews/"
style="font-size: 11pt;">pay</a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
$250 billion as compensation for what it claims was the
forceful exodus of Jews from Arab countries during the late
1940s.<br>
<br>
</span></font></div>
The events that Israel is citing allegedly occurred at a time when
Zionist Jewish militias were actively uprooting nearly one million
Palestinian Arabs and systematically destroying their homes,
villages and towns throughout Palestine. <br>
<br>
The Israeli <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-set-to-seek-250b-compensation-for-jews-forced-out-of-arab-countries/"
style="font-style: normal;">announcement</a>, which reportedly
followed “18 months of secret research” conducted by the Israeli
government’s Ministry of Social Equality, should not be filed under
the ever-expanding folder of shameless Israeli misrepresentations of
history. <br>
<br>
It is part of a calculated effort by the Israeli government, and
namely by Minister Gila Gamliel, to create a counter-narrative to
the rightful demand for the <a
href="https://www.afsc.org/resource/palestinian-refugees-and-right-return"
style="font-style: normal;">‘Right of Return’</a> for Palestinian
refugees ethnically cleansed by Jewish militias between 1947-1948. <br>
<br>
But there is a reason behind the Israeli urgency to reveal such
questionable research: the relentless US-Israeli attempt in the last
two years to dismiss the rights of Palestinian refugee rights, to
question their numbers and to marginalize their grievances. <br>
<br>
It is all part and parcel of the ongoing plot disguised as the ‘Deal
of the Century’, with the clear aim of removing from the table all
major issues that are central to the Palestinian struggle for
freedom. <br>
<br>
“The time has come to correct the historic injustice of the pogroms
(against Jews) in seven Arab countries and Iran, and to restore, to
hundreds of thousands of Jews who lost their property, what is
rightfully theirs,” <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-set-to-seek-250b-compensation-for-jews-forced-out-of-arab-countries/"
style="font-style: normal;">said</a> Gamliel. <br>
<br>
The language - “.. to correct the historic injustice” - is no
different from language used by Palestinians who have for 70 years
and counting been demanding the restoration of their rights per
United Nations <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194"
style="font-style: normal;">Resolution 194</a>. <br>
<br>
The deliberate conflating between the Palestinian narrative and the
Zionist narrative is aimed at creating parallels, with the hope that
a future political agreement would resolve to having both grievances
cancel each other out. <br>
<br>
Contrary to what Israeli historians want us to believe, there was <a
href="http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story2127.html"
style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">no mass exodus</a> of
Jews from Arab countries and Iran, but rather a massive campaign
orchestrated by Zionist leaders at the time to replace the Palestine
Arab population with Jewish immigrants from all over the world. <br>
<br>
The ways through which such a mission was achieved often <a
href="http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story2127.html"
style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">involved</a> violent
Zionist plots - especially in Iraq. In fact, the call on Jews to
gather in Israel from all corners of the world remains the <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-to-french-jews-israel-is-your-home/"
style="font-style: normal;">rally cry</a> for Israeli leaders and
their <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-armageddon-bring-it-on-the-evangelical-force-behind-trump-s-jerusalem-speech-1.5628081"
style="font-style: normal;">Christian Evangelical supporters</a> -
the former wants to ensure a Jewish majority in the state, while the
latter is seeking to fulfill a biblical condition for their
long-awaited Armageddon. <br>
<br>
To hold Arabs and Iran responsible for this bizarre and
irresponsible behavior is a transgression on the true history in
which neither Gamliel nor her ministry are interested. <br>
<br>
On the other hand, and unlike what Israeli military historians often
claim, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947- 48 (and the
subsequent purges of the native population that followed in 1967)
was a premeditated act of <a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2006.36.1.6?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"
style="font-style: normal;">ethnic cleansing</a> and <a
href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/hls.2014.0076?journalCode=hls"
style="font-style: normal;">genocide</a>. <br>
<br>
It has been part of a long-drawn and carefully calculated campaign
that, from the very start, served as the <a
href="http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/en/021020_pappe.html"
style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">main strategy</a> at
the heart of the Zionist movement’s ‘vision’ for the Palestinian
people.<br>
<br>
“We must expel the Arabs and take their place,” <a
href="https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/the-ben-gurion-letter/"
style="font-style: normal;">wrote</a> Israel’s founder, military
leader and first prime minister, David Ben Gurion in a letter to his
son, Amos in October 5, 1937. That was over a decade before Plan D -
which saw the destruction of the Palestinian homeland at the hands
of Ben Gurion’s militias - went into effect.<br>
<br>
Palestine “contains vast colonization potential,” he also wrote,
“which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified to exploit.” <br>
<br>
This clear declaration of a colonial project in Palestine,
communicated with the same kind of unmistakable racist insinuations
and language that accompanied all western colonial experiences
throughout the centuries was not unique to Ben Gurion. <br>
<br>
He was merely paraphrasing what was, by then, understood to be the <a
href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42231"
style="font-style: normal;">crux</a> of the Zionist enterprise in
Palestine at the time. <br>
<br>
As Palestinian professor Nur Masalha concluded in his <a
href="http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/en/021020_pappe.html"
style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">book</a>, the
‘Expulsion of the Palestinians’, the idea of the ‘transfer’ - the
Zionist term for “ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinian people - was,
and remains, fundamental in the realization of Zionist ambitions in
Palestine. <br>
<br>
Palestinian Arab “villages inside the Jewish state that resist
'should be destroyed .. and their inhabitants expelled beyond the
borders of the Jewish state,” Masalha wrote quoting the ‘History of
the Haganah’ by Yehuda Slutsky. <br>
<br>
What this meant in practice, as delineated by Palestinian historian,
Walid Khalidi was the joint targeting by various Jewish militias to
systematically attack all population centers in Palestine, without
exception. <br>
<br>
“By the end of April (1948), the combined Haganah-Irgun offensive
had completely encircled (the Palestinian city of) Jaffa, forcing
most of the remaining civilians to flee by sea to Gaza or Egypt;
many drowned in the process, ” Khalidi wrote in ‘Before Their
Diaspora’. <br>
<br>
This tragedy has eventually grown to affect all Palestinians,
everywhere within the borders of their historic homeland. <br>
<br>
Tens of thousands of refugees joined up with hundreds of thousands
more at various dusty trails throughout the country, growing in
numbers as they walked further, to finally pitch their tents in
areas that, then were meant to be ‘temporary’ refugee encampments. <br>
<br>
Alas, these became the Palestinian refugee camps of today, starting
some 70 years ago. None of this was accidental. The determination of
the early Zionists to establish a ‘national home’ for Jews at the
expense of the country’s Palestinian Arab nation was communicated,
openly, clearly and repeatedly throughout the formation of early
Zionist thoughts, and the translation of those well-articulated
ideas into physical reality.<br>
<br>
70 years have passed since the Nakba’ - the ‘Catastrophe’ of 1948 -
and neither Israel took responsibility for its action, nor
Palestinian refugees received any measure of justice, however small
or symbolic. <br>
<br>
For Israel to be seeking compensation from Arab countries and Iran
is a moral travesty, especially as Palestinians refugees continue to
languish in refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East. <br>
<br>
Yes, indeed “the time has come to correct the historic injustice,”
not of Israel’s alleged ‘pogroms’ carried out by Arabs and Iranians,
but the real and most tragic destruction of Palestine and its
people.
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