Greta needs a dose of the truth...
Reader comment on item: My Disrupted Talk at UCLA
in response to reader comment: Oh, please

Submitted by David Blain (United States), May 27, 2007 at 19:18

Jewish rights to Israel proceed from the original ownership of the land: The original and rightful owners were Jews. Despite their dispossession 2,000 years ago, Jews clung to life in Israel, never relinquishing their claim. Enduring the ruthlessness of the Byzantines, the massacres of the Muslim dynasties, the Crusaders, the Mongols, and the Turks, Jews struggled to maintain a continuous presence in Israel since the exile. Theirs is a tie that has never been severed. If anything, by maintaining over the centuries a purposeful, continuous and heroic presence in the conquered land, the Jews' claim to Israel has been affirmed and seared in the annals of time.

No subsequent hegemonic regional power, like the Ottomans, ever had the right to deny Jews a right to re-enter or to repurchase land titles from those willing to sell them. When Jews commenced what must be the most remarkable modern-day national revival, Israel was a wasteland. Palestinians had done precious little for the land they purport to so love. In fact, in 1948, the invading Arab armies instructed Palestinians to vacate their holdings in Israel until the Jews were exterminated, after which Palestinians would return to inherit the land. Palestinians duly scuttled, abandoning the land with nomadic ease.

Greta Berlin is on the wrong side of the issue. She should be supporting the people that have loved and lived in the land for thousands of years. And it is not the "Palestinians". By comparison, the Palestinian project is a recent project. It's a pan-Arabic undertaking, candidly discussed in the Arab world during the crucial years of propaganda shaping. Not wanting to leave the international community with the (true) impression that a hundred million or so Arabs aimed to destroy the tiny state of Israel, Arab leaders deployed the Palestinians' cause to achieve the same end.

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