[Peace-discuss] Article in Palestine Solidarity Review

[David Green]

Dear friends,

I am providing a link to the current issue of
Palestine Solidarity Review, www.psreview.org, and
online journal begun by activists previously on the
UIUC campus.

The current issue, Number 2, has an article written by
me regarding the emigration of Jews from Arab
countries and its recent incorporation into the
Zionist progaganda machine. I have also copied below
the American Jewish Committee ad that is quoted in my
article. While only one of the referenced links to my
article seems to work, most other articles can be
easily found if searched for in google.

I take full responsibility for the clunkiness of some
or all of my academic prose. Beyond that, I would of
course value your honest and critical response.

David Green


The Other Refugees
January 30, 2001 - The New York Times
February 28, 2001 - The International Herald Tribune

In 1947, the entire Arab world rejected the UN
partition plan creating separate Jewish and Arab
states in British-ruled Palestine, and instead
launched a war against the new State of Israel. The
Arab onslaught of 1948 and its aftermath tragically
produced two – not one – refugee populations, one
Jewish and one Arab.

More than 700,000 Jews across the Arab world were
forced to flee for their lives, their property
ransacked in deadly riots, and their schools,
hospitals, synagogues and cemeteries expropriated or
destroyed. 

Israel, European nations and the United States
absorbed these dispossessed Jews from centuries-old
communities.

Arab states, meanwhile, turned their backs on the
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who crossed into
Arab lands, even though many leaders had encouraged
them to fight and then flee Israel with the
expectation of a quick return.

Tragically, many Palestinians have remained
quarantined in squalid camps sustained by UN aid in
Arab countries for more than 53 years. Only one Arab
country, Jordan, has extended citizenship to the
Palestinians. 

While professing concern for their suffering, Arab
leaders instead cynically use the refugees as
political pawns in the endless war against Israel.

Why the difference in treatment? 

The answer now is clearer than ever in the wake of the
Palestinian rejection of Israel’s outstretched hand of
peace. Neither repeated war nor terrorism nor economic
boycott has driven Jews from their ancestral homeland.


Thus, the Palestinian leadership, backed by many in
the Arab world, seeks the destruction of Israel
through the “return” of the refugees and their
millions of descendants.

Unsettled issues for both refugee populations need to
be resolved. But asking Israel to open its borders to
millions of Palestinians is not a solution – unless
what the world wants is Israel’s national suicide. 

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