Dealing with Palestinian Refugees

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

    UN Partition Plan that was turned down by the Arabs-1947

At the time, they didn't want their own state, only to drive out the Jews.  Otherwise, they would have accepted the plan.  Now, 74 years later, they say they want their own state.  But they refuse to comply with requirements of having peaceful intentions with Israel by bombing her every day from Gaza.  

Palestinians have accomplished one thing in my eyes:  The Christian world is in sympathy with them.  They are tired of the haggling.  Just at the point where there are Palestinians who are relenting in their hatred, the Christians want the problem finished.    They don't want to hear about the refugees any longer.  Church groups favor the Palestinians.  Israel is still the sacrificial lamb on the altar;  the scapegoat.  Europe wants a Palestine.  The USA is under pressure. No one is standing up and leading the way strongly saying, shape up or ship out.  Be decent to Israel and you'll have a life like everyone else. Make something of yourself instead of a tunnel digger or killer.  Well, any guy that stands up in this group gets shot down, literally! 
 

Israel's birth was  May 14, 1948.  By the next year, Egyptian Foreign Minister, Salah al Din said, "It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland, and not as slaves.  With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of Israel."  In other words, their return to land now a part of Israel is to destroy the Jewish hold on the land;  Israel.  

These Arabs had left at the advice of other Arab leaders that the united Arab army was going to attack and take over the land.  They should get out of the way.  When they finished killing off the Jews, they would be able to return and live in the homes of those Jews.  Where these Arabs found a spot to wait the attack out, became places of permanent refuge for them, as the Israelis managed to weather their attack and had fully established the Israel nation.  They had been deluded by their own leadership.  

There has never been a state of Palestine, only the Israelite land renamed by the Romans.  It was an expanse, according to Mark Twain, that was not very large by American standards, "being only 40 to 60 miles wide.  The state of Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines, and there would be enough material left for part of another---possibly a while one.  From Baltimore to San Francisco is several thousand miles, bur it will be only a 7 days' journey in the cars when I am 2 or 3 years older---(The railroad has been complete since the above was written)---if I live I shall necessarily have to go across the continent every now and then in those cars, but one journey from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no doubt.  It must be the most trying of the two. " 

Arabs originated in Arabia.  The population did not leave until the death of Mohammad in 632 CE.  They struck out in a frenzy of converting populations to Islam.  In this 7th century, the Arab Rashiduns conquered the Levant; they were later succeeded by other Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Umayyads, Abbasids and the Fatimids. Over time, much of the existing population of Palestine adopted Arab culture and language, and converted to Islam. 

                         Today's Bedouin boy on a camel

 Mostly, Bedouins were found migrating through Palestine at the time of the 1st Aliyah from Europe of Jews returning, escaping pogroms, attacks in Eastern Europe in 1880.  Others heard of their return and building projects, and they followed them, hoping to get jobs.  They came from all over the Levant, but mostly from Syria.  Many of their homes bore evidence of being owned by former Jews as etchings in the walls were found to be Hebrew.  The famous writer, Mark Twain, visited Palestine on a tour in February 1867,  He describes the Bedouins, saying they had attacked our camp last night, and he tells how they "traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons--Arabs with nothing on but a long coarse shirt like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of little negro boys on Southern plantations.  Shepherds, they were--and they charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe--a reed instrument..."

By July 15, 1957, only 8 years later than that honest statement of al Din's, the Arab Refugee Conference was held in Homs, Syria and passed a resolution stating: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on assuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason."                                  

Four years later on September 1,1961, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's President, declared "If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.  

The Palestinian goal to return and live in Israel has been to destroy the Jewish state, so it is easy to understand why the Arab world has treated the 650,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants so miserably and not accept them into the 20 some Muslim surrounding states but keep them in these original refugee camps.  They have been used as pawns in a chess game to destroy Israel.  No other people have been so dependent on the UN for survival as these people.  It's been 74 years that they have maintained refugee status that originated from their ggreat grandparents.  The UN has been aiding and abetting their cause.  

Since the end of WWII, there have been over 50 million refugees from dozens of countries, the overwhelming majority of whom have been successfully resettled.  This number includes the almost 800,000 Jewish refugees that were expelled from  Arab countries in 1948.  Naturally Israel was offered as their homeland, but if they had other ideas, were helped to get to the USA, etc.  It was world Jewry that made sure that every one of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were given a place to live, money to begin a new life, and citizenship in the country to which he or she fled.  Israel received 586,000 into Israel in that period. 

Only Jordan allowed Palestinian refugees to become citizens.  They had their major problems with them, too with the Black September attack of Palestinians trying to take over the government in 1970-71.  But the king married a Palestinian girl, (copying King Solomon's moves) and things calmed down.  

Driven by hatred of Israel and the Jews, the Arab world had a policy of keeping these people homeless in refugee camps.  Dr. Elfan Rees, adviser on refugees to the World Council of Churches, noted  ,"The Arab refugee problem is by far the easiest post-war refugee problem.  By faith, by language, by race, and by social organization,, they are  indistinguishable from their fellows or the host country."

                              Faisal II, king of Iraq in 1958.  

UN Rep, Ralph Garroway, former director of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said in August 1958, "The Arab states....want to keep the refugee problem in an open sore, as an affront to the UN and as a weapon against Israel.  Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die. " 

I may add that the culture of Muslims allows them to have 4 wives at a time.  Most must not have birth control since their numbers multiply quickly with 4 wives, 4 times faster than the Jews who maintain one, at least at a time, like the rest of the world.  

Israel has even offered to help resolve the refugees' plight in cooperation with Palestinian and Arab committees, which have refused to explore a solution.  In a 1967 editorial, the New York times noted the naivete of an argument stating that Israel should allow the return of all refugees. "The readmission of the refugees would be the equivalent to the admission to the United States of nearly 70,000,000 sworn enemies of the nation. " They try to keep even one out.

      This could also be in California where they had these detention camps.  

  Remember, they even took all their Japanese citizens during WWII and placed them in locked up places, like in areas meant for cattle.  From May to November 1942, Nyssa [pronounced NISS-a], Eastern Oregon, served as the site of the first farm labor camp organized during the wartime Japanese American experience.  It was a detention facility.  The fear was that they would help the Japanese enemy.   

The federal government leased the 43-acre property from the Pacific International Association and Pacific International Livestock Exposition, Inc. for $27,000 a year. Built in the 1920s, the complex had served as a livestock exhibition center and rodeo venue in the '20s and '30s. The residential area of the camp was in a series of buildings covering 460,000 square feet (about eleven acres). This indoor space included a concourse building that also housed the Henry Thiele Restaurant, two other halls, an arena and show ring, and various animal pavilions, including dairy, beef, swine, horse, sheep, and an area used for dog shows. The stalls and pens for the animals were removed, and the U.S. Army Engineers built small family quarters out of plywood to house Japanese American families. As in other assembly centers, the walls went only about eight feet high, leaving a large open area above—the roof of the pavilion was twenty to thirty feet high—that allowed sounds and smells to carry freely between units. The entire complex was surrounded by barbed wire fences with machine gun nest equipped sentry towers at the corners. The facility was also right across from Jantzen Beach, and former inmates recalled being able to hear the sounds of the amusement park located there. This was right in Portland, Oregon.  

I wouldn't want to remain in a refugee camp.  It's horrible to raise people to hate Jews, and that's what is happening to those in such camps, but they cannot be allowed to live in Israel, who already is made up of 20% Muslim Arabs.  It's going to, must, be a Jewish country, a refuge for Jews, the only one in the world.  Those Arabs alive today have no roots in Israel, and can move to any of the other more than 48 Muslim majority states in the world, or even other European states that are secular.   

Resource:

Why the Jews? by Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin

from Mitchell g. Bard PhD, Al-Misri, October 11, 1949 (Egypt's foreign minister, Salah al Din) statement.  

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, p 203

From Time Immemorial-the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters.

http://cojs.org/41979-2/

https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/japanese_internment/#.YxdzbXbMKUk

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-un-partition-plan