What if Jews had followed the 'Palestinian Path'? NYT op-ed

Started by Caliga, June 20, 2011, 10:25:47 AM

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Caliga

This seems like the kind of op-ed piece that will stimulate discussion here. :)

QuoteWhat If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?
Postwar Jewish refugees left everything they had in Europe—no 'right of return' requested.
By WARREN KOZAK

It is doubtful that there has ever been a more miserable human refuse than Jewish survivors after World War II. Starving, emaciated, stateless—they were not welcomed back by countries where they had lived for generations as assimilated and educated citizens. Germany was no place to return to and in Kielce, Poland, 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust were killed in a pogrom one year after the war ended. The European Jew, circa 1945, quickly went from victim to international refugee disaster.

Yet within a very brief time, this epic calamity disappeared, so much so that few people today even remember the period. How did this happen in an era when Palestinian refugees have continued to be stateless for generations?

In 1945, there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors living in DP Camps (displaced persons) across Europe. They were fed and clothed by Jewish and international relief organizations. Had the world's Jewish population played this situation as the Arabs and Palestinians have, everything would look very different today.

To begin with, the Jews would all still be living in these DP camps, only now the camps would have become squalid ghettos throughout Europe. The refugees would continue to be fed and clothed by a committee similar to UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (paid for mostly by the United States since 1948). Blessed with one of the world's highest birth rates, they would now number in the many millions. And 66 years later, new generations, fed on a mixture of hate and lies against the Europeans, would now seethe with anger.

Sometime in the early 1960s, the Jewish leadership of these refugee camps, having been trained in Moscow to wreak havoc on the West (as Yasser Arafat was) would have started to employ terrorism to shake down governments. Airplane hijackings in the 1970s would have been followed by passenger killings. There would have been attacks on high-profile targets as well—say, the German or Polish Olympic teams.

By the 1990s, the real mayhem would have begun. Raised on victimhood and used as cannon fodder by corrupt leaders, a generation of younger Jews would be blowing up buses, restaurants and themselves. The billions of dollars extorted from various governments would not have gone to the inhabitants of the camps. The money would be in the Swiss bank accounts of the refugees' famous and flamboyant leaders and their lackies.

So now it's the present, generations past the end of World War II, and the festering Jewish refugee problem throughout Europe has absolutely no end in sight. The worst part of this story would be the wasted lives of millions of human beings in the camps—inventions not invented, illnesses not cured, high-tech startups not started up, symphonies and books not written—a real cultural and spiritual desert.

None of this happened, of course. Instead, the Jewish refugees returned to their ancestral homeland. They left everything they had in Europe and turned their backs on the Continent—no "right of return" requested. They were welcomed by the 650,000 Jewish residents of Israel.

An additional 700,000 Jewish refugees flooded into the new state from Arab lands after they were summarily kicked out. Again losing everything after generations in one place; again welcomed in their new home.

In Israel, they did it all the hard way. They built a new country from scratch with roads, housing and schools. They created agricultural collectives to feed their people. They created a successful economy without domestic oil, and they built one of the world's most vibrant democracies in a region sadly devoid of free thought.

Yes, the Israelis did all this with the financial assistance of Jews around the world and others who helped get them on their feet so they could take care of themselves. These outsiders did not ignore them, or demean them, or use them as pawns in their own political schemes—as the Arab nations have done with the Palestinians.

I imagine the argument will be made that while the Jews may have achieved all this, they did not have their land stolen from them. This is, of course, a canard, another convenient lie. They did lose property all over Europe and the Mideast. And there was never an independent Palestine run by Palestinian Arabs. Ever. Jews and Arabs lived in this area controlled first by the Turks and then by the British. The U.N. offered the two-state solution that we hear so much about in 1947. The problem then, and now, is that it was accepted by only one party, Israel. No doubt, the situation of Arab residents of the Middle East back then may have been difficult, but it is incomprehensible that their lot was worse than that of the Jews at the end of World War II.

We don't hear about any of this because giving human beings hope and purpose doesn't make great copy. Squalor, victimhood and terror are always more exciting. Perhaps in the end, the greatest crime of the Jews was that they quietly created something from nothing. And in the process, they transformed themselves.

Golda Meir is credited with having said that if the Jews had not fought back against the Arab armies and had been destroyed in 1948, they would have received the most beautiful eulogies throughout the world. Instead, they chose to stand their ground and defend themselves. And in winning, they received the world's condemnation. Meir said she would take the condemnation over the eulogies.

Mr. Kozak is the author of "LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay" (Regnery, 2009).
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Neil

But the Jews did engage in a heavy campaign of terrorism, which stopped once they achieved their goal.  Also, the Palestinians didn't have the advantage of having enough American money backing them to be able to engage in an aggressive war of conquest, and such a thing wasn't really practical in the Cold War era, which made following the example of the Jews impossible.

At any rate, in the alternate universe they postulate, the Jews would simply be exterminated, as the DP camps would turn into extermination camps.  Continental Europeans can't be trusted not to kill Jews.
I do not hate you, nor do I love you, but you are made out of atoms which I can use for something else.

The Brain

If you help Jews they murder you and make the murderers prime ministers. RIP Folke Bernadotte.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

DGuller

Jesus, you guys still go on about this?  He wasn't even shot that many times.

Zoupa

QuoteAn additional 700,000 Jewish refugees flooded into the new state from Arab lands after they were summarily kicked out. Again losing everything after generations in one place; again welcomed in their new home.

:lol:

So what's the author's point? Palestinians as a people are dumber than Jews?

grumbler

Quote from: DGuller on June 20, 2011, 12:41:43 PM
Jesus, you guys still go on about this?  He wasn't even shot that many times.
And he didn't even have to pay for the bullets; the Stern Gang gave them away free of charge!
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Caliga

Quote from: Zoupa on June 20, 2011, 12:46:55 PM
:lol:

So what's the author's point? Palestinians as a people are dumber than Jews?
I read it more like "Jews are a united people, while Muslims are a fractured people, and that is a big reason why the Jews have succeeded and the Palestinians have not."
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dps

Obviously not what he meant, but if one isn't familiar with the historical context, you could imagine that he's suggesting that the Palestinians leave the Middle East and carve out a nation for themselves in Euorpe.

Valmy

Quote from: Zoupa on June 20, 2011, 12:46:55 PM
So what's the author's point? Palestinians as a people are dumber than Jews?

Not sure but damn if the Arabs have not used the Pals as a weapon instead of trying to help them out.  It is illegal for the Pals to immigrate into most Arab nations.  That is pretty sad.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Zoupa

Quote from: dps on June 20, 2011, 01:02:48 PM
Obviously not what he meant, but if one isn't familiar with the historical context, you could imagine that he's suggesting that the Palestinians leave the Middle East and carve out a nation for themselves in Euorpe.

Southern Spain sounds good. There's a historical argument to be made, several centuries old. Sounds good to me.  :)

Jacob

Quote from: Zoupa on June 20, 2011, 01:39:54 PMSouthern Spain sounds good. There's a historical argument to be made, several centuries old. Sounds good to me.  :)

I think Sweden's a better bet. According to some it's already happened, so we might as well roll with it.

Razgovory

Quote from: Zoupa on June 20, 2011, 01:39:54 PM
Quote from: dps on June 20, 2011, 01:02:48 PM
Obviously not what he meant, but if one isn't familiar with the historical context, you could imagine that he's suggesting that the Palestinians leave the Middle East and carve out a nation for themselves in Euorpe.

Southern Spain sounds good. There's a historical argument to be made, several centuries old. Sounds good to me.  :)

Or the Southwestern third of France.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Caliga

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Zoupa

Quote from: Razgovory on June 20, 2011, 02:33:46 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on June 20, 2011, 01:39:54 PM
Quote from: dps on June 20, 2011, 01:02:48 PM
Obviously not what he meant, but if one isn't familiar with the historical context, you could imagine that he's suggesting that the Palestinians leave the Middle East and carve out a nation for themselves in Euorpe.

Southern Spain sounds good. There's a historical argument to be made, several centuries old. Sounds good to me.  :)

Or the Southwestern third of France.

Nice try.  :)

Crazy_Ivan80

Quote from: dps on June 20, 2011, 01:02:48 PM
Obviously not what he meant, but if one isn't familiar with the historical context, you could imagine that he's suggesting that the Palestinians leave the Middle East and carve out a nation for themselves in Euorpe.
Ancestral lands of Arabs are not in Europe. Saoudi-Arabia though..