The Australian Financial Review allowed this through onto its letters page:-
Palestinians miss out
The Palestinians were entitled to reject the United Nations partition plan. By 1947, despite massive Jewish immigration from Europe Jews formed only 33% of the population. However, the UN Partition plan gave the Jews 54% of Palestine, even though they owned only 6 % of Palestine’s land.
So the Palestinians were asked to give up more then half of their country for the benefit of a minority of recently arrived European settlers. Not surprisingly, they refused.
These European Jewish settlers had no intention of restricting their state to the borders envisaged by the UN partition plan. In November 1947 they attacked the Arab state proposed under the UN, destroyed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, and expelled their inhabitants. Only the intervention of the Arab armies in May 1948 prevented a Jewish takeover of all of Palestine in 1948
Paul Dixon,
Fraser,ACT
The flaw in Dixon's argument is that implication that because the Jews owned 6% of what remained Palestine in 1947 then the Arabs must have owned all of the remainder which is untrue - most of it was Crown Land and a large part of it was desert land. The big lie is that European Jews "attacked the Arab state proposed under the UN". This is a preposterous assertion that would make even the most bent of revisionist historians blush bright red. It is the sort of lie we can expect from unrepentant anti-Semites who have no qualms about distorting Jewish history for their own propaganda ends.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Do you dispute the claim that Jews made up 1/3 of the population yet were to recive more than half the land? Or that, once attacked, the Jewish settlers did drive thousands of Palestinians from their homes?
Only a Fairfax Newspaper letters editor would ppublish that letter Jaspan must be proud!
Anonymous 3:30PM
You're a funny chap aren't you?
Do you dispute the claim that you beat your wife?
Yes the Jews were to receive more than half - the half that was mostly desert whereas the Arab's portion was mostly fertile.
Furthermore only about 10% of the land was in private hands the rest being Crown land taken by the British from the Ottoman Government after WWI.
The 6% owned by the Jews was sold to them by Arabs who were glad to exchange swampland for cash at 3 times the price of prime agricultural land in the USA at the time.
anonymous of 3:30pm, if you want an answer to your question, this letter published in today's AFR just about covers it:-
Paul Dixon's interpretation of why the Palestinians missed out on a country is factually incorrect (AFR 19/6/08).
First, the Jewish presence in Israel dates 3000 years and in 1948 did not comprise only "recently arrived European settlers", as he claims.
Second, he states that Jews "attacked the Arab state proposed by the UN", and "only the intervention of the Arab armies … prevented a full takeover of all of Palestine".
In fact, within hours of the UN declaring the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, five Arab armies attacked it with the explicit objective of destroying it. Their refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist – a refusal which has continued across the Middle East, with the notable exceptions of Egypt and Jordan, and is spelt out in Hamas’ charter to this day – lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
Vic Alhadeff
Chief Executive Officer
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies,
anonoymous 3.30 pm says
'Or that, once attacked, the Jewish settlers did drive thousands of Palestinians from their homes?
You betcha once attacked the Jews should have kicked the arses of the Arabs ,there were 600,000 jews and millions of Arabs i'd say the Jews did a pretty good job considering the odd's!'
Sorry, but I was just asking the question. The responses dont really answer it either. What about the actual division of Palestine? Would the arab armies have a legitimate reason for attacking Israel if the division of territory was grossly unequal?
Post a Comment