Much has been reported about the Palestinian refugees – those who live or lived in squalor for decades. What is pathetically ignored, however, is why…the why, the who, the when…
Why? Simple enough – it is a combination of many factors – mainly, chaos as five Arab nations invaded the newly declared land of Israel. In many documented cases, the Arab armies told the native Arab population to get out of the way so they could more easily push the Jews into the sea and claim all the land for the Arabs. The native Arab population moved; the belligerent Arab nations didn’t succeed.
Who? Who kept them in squalor – their Arab brothers put them in camps and left them there. Kept them hungry and poor, fed on a diet of hatred and bigotry. It was the Jews, they were told, the Israelis.
And while they were doing this, they were performing ethnic cleansing – kicking the Jews out of their lands. This is their story below. I don’t normally post long videos here, but this one is worth watching – if there are Arab refugees today, there are no fewer Jewish refugees as well.
The reason these refugees are not recognized is because while Israel put them in camps when they first arrived – we called them tent cities – and as soon as we could, they were relocated to apartments, to housing, to homes. Today, my neighbor next door, across the street, and diagonally across as well – are all products of those tent cities. They own houses that cost at least as much as my house does (in two cases, quite a bit more). One is a judge; one is an engineer; and the third is in business.
The real question is not what to do with the Palestinian refugees…the real question is why are they still refugees? And the real answer is that they aren’t – three generations later – they should be Jordanians, Syrians, Saudis. If they aren’t – that is the fault of those who kept them in squalor.
What happened in 1948 was war and the result was a transfer of populations in almost equal numbers.
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