Zionist Conspiracy

1. I would hereby like to nominate Professor Carlo Strenger, from the
department of psychology at Tel Aviv University, for the Philistine of the
Year Award.

Strenger is a far-leftist hater of Israel and Zionism who regularly
explains to Haaretz readers why Israel is a horrible state unworthy of
existence, but the Hamas is really misunderstood. (A collection of
Strengerisms may be read here:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003938713500856905333%3Aghdjn7wl9zu&ie=UTF-8&q=strenger
) But today Strenger goes beyond that to support hooligan violence
against Orthodox Jews! Really!

The background to this is the continuing campaign of intimidation and
violence by ultra-secularists in Ramat Aviv, where Strenger lives and
where his Tel Aviv University is located, against Orthodox Jews. The
ultra-secularists claim there is a cabal by the Orthodox to "take over"
the neighborhood. You know, like the Elders of Zion.

Anti-religious bigotry is the main form of bigotry in Israel.
Strenger and his anti-Orthodox stormtrooper buddies are no doubt the very
first to take to the barricades to support the right of Arabs to move into
Jewish towns and communities in Carmiel and elsewhere. But they insist
they have the right to "defend liberalism," to use Strenger's words, and
use violence to keep the Orthodox out of Ramat Aviv.

Strenger's version of Der Sturmer appears in Haaretz this morning at
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1087998.html . Notice the title:
"Liberalism has the right to defend itself." That is so Orwellian that I
really cannot think of a way to mock it. Defend liberalism by beating up
Orthodox Jews who move into your neighborhood! You have the right to
harass the Orthodox if you invent a claim that the Orthodox harass the
secularists! (How? By saying Shabbat Shalom to them?)

Here are some selections from Strenger's Haaretz rant:

'Imagine seeing the following story in the news: "A Haredi neighborhood
has been flooded by requests from secular Jews to rent and buy apartments.
They have opened bars in the neighborhood as well as an Agudat Hillel
office, which offers assistance and advice to Haredi youths who want to
become secular. The Haredim have started to counterattack; they have
launched a Web site encouraging Haredim not to rent apartments to
seculars, and are warning that the neighborhood's religious value and way
of life is in danger.".
'The story in Ramat Aviv happens to be the other way around: Secular Jews
are organizing to defend their lifestyle against a Haredi influx..The
answer is very simple: from Safed to Beit Shemesh, from Ramot Eshkol in
Jerusalem to Arad, the story has repeated itself: Haredim begin by renting
or buying apartments, and once they reach a critical mass, they make life
for the remaining secular Jews impossible through pressure, harassment and
even threats. This is not a paranoid leftist nightmare, but a matter of
historical fact. So is the Haredi belief that, in the long run, they will
take over the country..
'Many liberals confuse this with the mistaken idea that liberalism cannot
and must not defend itself, its values and its lifestyle. The result is
that liberals often try to appease those who attack it rather than
exercising self defense. The ideology of political correctness that says
liberals must respect other groups' feelings, but that other groups can
attack and vilify liberalism, is extreme.'

So Strenger thinks that liberalism means that self-proclaimed
liberals have the right to harass and use violence against those with whom
they disagree, all in the name of "self-defense of liberalism.' I
wonder what he would make of an article claiming that conservatives have
the right to bash him over the head with a baseball bat, all in the name
of defending conservatism? How about the right of Zionists to exercise
defense of tolerance and dignity by stringing up anti-Israel self-hating
leftist tenured traitors from lamp posts?

Meanwhile, Strenger is not the only secularist yahoo promoting
violence, hooliganism, and thuggery against the Orthodox. You may recall
an earlier posting here about parents at a school in Jerusalem calling in
the police to arrest a woman handing out Sabbath candles to students
outside a secular school on a Friday. Had she been handing out crystal
meth and ecstasy, the parents would have had no problems with it.

Then there was the story earlier this week of the principal at a
secular Tel Aviv high school suspending a student because he influenced
his student friends to come to school wearing a yarmulke. For an update
on that, go here:
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/05/philistines-in-herzliya.html
Had the student in question influences his friends to smoke dope in
school, the principal would no doubt have raised no objections to it!

Want to tell the officers of Tel Aviv University what you think of
Strenger endorsing anti-Orthodox bigotry and violence? Contact:
President, Professor Zvi Galil
Email spiegelr@post.tau.ac.il
zg1@post.tau.ac.il
and galil@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
Fax: 972-3-6422379 and 972-3-642-2752

Rector: Prof. Dany Leviatan
Email: leviatan@post.tau.ac.il
and rector@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University:
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=contact_us and
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_tau
Other

2. As you know, Israel's Jews for a Second Holocaust have been
promoting the idea that Israel's very existence is a catastrophe or
"Nakba" in Arabic.

Now Ben Dror Yemini, the new Editor in Chief at Maariv, takes on the
self-hating Left and its amen choir and dispells their claims. The
folloing is a bit long but definitely worth wading through and using:

*The Jewish Nakba ***
by Ben Dror Yemini
*Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions*

Originally published in Hebrew, in
MAARIV<http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/891/209.html>

*Each year, the Palestinians mark Nakba Day, the catastrophe that befell
them with the establishment of the State of Israel. But the Jews in Arab
countries also suffered catastrophe and it was many times worse.*

* *

*Ben-Dror Yemini <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Dror_Yemini> *

*They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika)
Hatuel<http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/009518.shtml>was 17
years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had
succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied to the claim, she was accused
of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the
sultan.
*

* *

*In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her
to live as a Muslim. She refused and said**, "I was born as a Jew, I will
die as a Jew." Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from
Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave.
Despite
the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a
famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following
article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.***

Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians - and many others around
the
world along with them - "celebrate" Nakba Day. For them, this is the day
that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the
establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs
became
refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous
proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.

We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations
for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens
of
millions of people experienced
it<http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/009518.shtml>,
but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been
inflating the myth of the Nakba.

However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same
years,
there was a long line of slaughters, pogroms, property confiscation of and
deportations - against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history
has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the
Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that
Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.

Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred
to
heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it
bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to
rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.

The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it
into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications
and
conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical
process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the
Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even
though
the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed.
There
were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and
condemned.

War of Extermination against the Jews

A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab
countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived.
They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was
erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken
over
history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist
narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the
truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was
greater, and their suffering greater..

A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the
Arab
side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to
the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the
future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: "*The
Jews
brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed
gold
and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything
by
force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and did
not
hesitate to massacre their children and women ... Thus, a black fate
awaits
the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with
Muslim Palestine*". The interesting thing is that one of the letter's
signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad,
the president of Syria.

We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel's
independence, May 15th . We must remember what happened just a few hours
after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, *Abdul Rahman
Hassan Azzam*aha, announced the declaration of
war<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Hassan_Azzam>against
Israel: "This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the
slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the
Crusaders."

The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second
World War, added his own bit: " I am declaring a holy war. My brother
Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!" The mini-Holocaust of the
Jews
in Arab countries.

Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that
the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of
war
on the Jews.

Research <http://www.justiceforjews.com/jjac.pdf> that was conducted,
among
others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows
that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of
sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts
and
more. The preamble to the bill states that "All Jews will be considered
members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine." And if the fate
of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab
countries
was clear.

The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in
Arab
countries - sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later
in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any
legislation. According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries
lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the
government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm
done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.

This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab
countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before
the
advent of Zionism, their situation was not anybetter. There were periods
in
which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods
were the exceptions. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were
humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.

Series of Pogroms

We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews.
Muhammed undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya
period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism - primarily, perhaps, from
the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for
example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad
wanted to convert the Jews, They, of course, refused. The result was a
confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.

The Jews, as the "People of the Book," were given the right to live under
the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time,
from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many
cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif
Omar<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_of_Omar>
.

This covenant enabled them to live as protected people ("*Dhimmis*"),
albeit
with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not
even
allowed a life of inferior status.

*The Golden Age: *One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims
is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The
reality, however, was different.

It encompassed a series of
violence<http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=701916b5-4f75-4a2b-8fa2-535badfb4ffe>against
the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were
pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to
thousands
were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with
between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began
in
1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhid.n), and ruled
Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.

*Morocco:* The country that suffered from the worst series of
massacres<http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/pogrom.htm>.
In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In
1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The
rise
of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to
testimony
from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in
Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another
massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.

There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were
murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880,
there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which
hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities -
Taza
and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.

In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and
many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which
60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another
series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42
in
the cities of Oujda and Jrada.

*Algeria:* A series of
massacres<http://books.google.com/books?id=Tdn6FFZklkcC&pg=RA1-PA9&lpg=RA1-PA9&dq=algeria+jews+pogrom&source=bl&ots=qJZnz9wEYM&sig=dMbedZCt0eDZ4OpJ_UutBOy_XE4&hl=iw&ei=logGSoidJZqQjAeln8z0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#PRA1-PA10,M1>occurred
in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the
start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish
outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of
the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi
influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of
Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed
against
citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was
effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely
penniless, together with the French ("pieds noirs").

*Libya:* In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under
Nazi
influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in
Benghazi
was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were
killed.
In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and
the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the
horrible
scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots
that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were
killed.
Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were
slaughtered.

*Iraq:* a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews
improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with
Iraq's
independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in
1941
in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered
(according
to historian Elie
Kedourie<http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/recognition_for_the_silent_jew.html>,
600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.

Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against
the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi
parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze
the
assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The
Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and
purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand
who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were
sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11
Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.

*Syria: *The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and
led
to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to
the
point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian
Minister
of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, "The Matzah of Zion," in
which
he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to
bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred
in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut
in
1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which
also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the
Jews
of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews
of
Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community
was
destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned
most
of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many
years as hostages.

* *

*Iran: *There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was
incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to
convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910,
there
was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish
homes were pillaged.

*Yemen: *There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between
tolerance
and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam's
Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of
the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the
Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be
detailed here for lack of space.

One of the worst milestones was the Mawza
exile<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=3427104C6A464847E7DD1659FD3B4EB2.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=332917>.
Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into
one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60
-
75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were
imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was
the
Orphans' Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children
to
Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in
1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned
by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the
community's buildings were burned down.

*Egypt: *As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered
inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred
when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat,
Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: "*To the Muslims, no race is more
worthy of contempt than the Jewish race." Another diplomat added, "The
Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the
Jews*."

Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in
Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo
in
1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in
1901-1907.
Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.

Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in
1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the
Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led
to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on
partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between
80
and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and
abandoning
their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a
law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship,
forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of
pure
expulsion and mass property confiscation.

***

The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in
Muslim
countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the
Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of
thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale
of
coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet
another completely baseless myth.

Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt's ambassador to
the
UN, Heykal Pasha,
warned<http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/recognition_for_the_silent_jew.html>that
"
*The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the
vote is for partition... if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish
blood
will be spilled elsewhere in the world*."

Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al
Jamali<http://www.meforum.org/263/why-jews-fled-the-arab-countries>said
that "
*We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after
the
harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together*." There was no harmony.
There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali
lied,
of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of
Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.

Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already
presented
a plan for expelling the Jews in
1949<http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2005/05/origins-of-exchange-of-populations.html>,
even before the hasty - actually forced - exit of the Jews from Iraq. He
also explained that "The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have
no
place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able." Said even
presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into
passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented
anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population
exchange.

So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a
continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been
Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of
mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of
the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in
the
19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s - was under colonial rule.
In
most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion
and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.

* * *

Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in
the
course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom
against
Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the
worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred
as
part of a military confrontation.

Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in
perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and
without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few
Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite
this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable
investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews
by
Arabs, was erased and forgotten.

Let's return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have
called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that
it
was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the
civilian
population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were
actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population.
Thousands of Jews were slaughtered - women, children and the elderly. The
Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in
the
1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of
their brethren.

The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were
murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in
Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on
partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815
Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on
April
9, 1948), some afterwards (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy,
79
killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and
terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered
Jews.
But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the
Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned
less and less.

*The Palestinians paid the price*

Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the
establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most
left
because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a
crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who
paid
the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their
leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a
result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that
remained in Israel.

Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated
Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab
countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the
forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney
Zabludoff<http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=388&PID=0&IID=2196>,
an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab
property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property
which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).

So even in this area, the Palestinians' claims are refuted. They dragged
the
Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who
caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in
blood.

This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no
means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced
conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite.
When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians
in
particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in
lives,
is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to
understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we
start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The
Jewish
Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering
of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the
experience
as part of the creation of new nation states.

It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for
the
purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the
truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations.
Inshallah.

--
Ben-Dror Yemini
Skype: bdy222
Gmail talk: bdyemini
Tel: 00-972-52-3112227
Links to translated articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Dror_Yemini