Does anyone really care about the Palestinians?

[darkhorse]

As we watch Michael Martin highlight the problems of the Palestinians in the West Bank and as Arab states condemn Israel for their treatment of Palestinians, one wonders how much of this is real.
Does anyone care about the 4.5 million Palestinians living in Arab countries in squalid refugee camps?
These arab governments almost all of whom are dictators have left Palestinians stateless and destitute - purely as a means of applying pressure to Israel. They are held as hostages to prove the injustices of 1948 - which is over 60 years ago now.
As an example, in Lebanon, Palestinians were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions.

Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. Along with dispossession and marginalisation has come a new and frightening turn away from the traditional forms of nationalism that once dominated the refugee camps towards the radical pan-Islamic ideology of al-Qa'ida.

The inclusion of the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees in UNRWA's mandate has no parallel in international humanitarian law and is responsible for the growth of the official numbers of Palestinian refugees in foreign countries from 711,000 to 4.6 million during decades when the number of ageing refugees from the 1948 Israeli war of independence in was in fact declining. UNRWA's grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law. According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees," and must "make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings" – the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan. For all the easy criticism that can be levelled at UNRWA, it is hard to see how many Palestinian refugees would have survived without the agency's help.

No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora - Middle East, World - The Independent

[former wesleyan]

QUOTE:-One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries UNQUOTE

From the same article.

[darkhorse]

QUOTE:-One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries UNQUOTE

From the same article.

hence the title of the thread...

[former wesleyan]

hence the title of the thread...

I get it. Got it.

[brughahaha]

Ive said it before old weslyan.... if I was your parents I'd demand my money back for the poor education you've received.. I know your alma mater (so improtant you feel obliged to let the rest of the world know ) produced an Israeli president but even its own newspapers accept that Apartheid is alive and well in Israel

Yes, it is apartheid - Haaretz - Israel News

BTW if you think Palestinians are unimportant (maybe in your zionist head) have a look at the opprobrium (look it up eh) poured on Alan Shatter on these pages and not just by regular contributors to the Is /Pal threads

Another example would be my sister and her college friends (Trinity) who spent a summer on a kibbutz in the late 70's (as was the groovey thing to do at the time.... a land without people for a people without land, and making the desert bloom **************************************** propoganda)
Ermm they ALL boycott Israeli goods now

So yes many people care about the Palestinians even if a mindless etnic cleansing supporter like you doesn't
(why do I picture you as the embodiment of Ross O Carroll Kelly)

[Thranduil]

....A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels
........

Tell me this is not the same Judith Miller that was completely discredited because of the propaganda she peddled about Iraq and WMD in the run up to that war at the New York Times?

The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe.

Interestingly did you know that while Ireland was being attacked and planted with the natives hunted down and not allowed set foot in the English garrisoned towns that in 1555 Youghal in Cork had a Jewish Mayor called William Annyas? Or that the Holy Roman Empire had a huge Jewish population in the late medieval period which was extremely prosperous? Or that Jewish merchants began to dominate trade across Europe and to the new world in the 17thC... I think the suffering of the Jews prior to the holocaust in Europe has been considerably exaggerated relative to the baseline (how others suffered in this period).

Is the underlying basis of this article another crack at the transfer idea? It has long been a desire of Israel's to have other Arab countries take responsibility for the Palestinians (after the Israelis would expel them or encourage them to leave).

[darkhorse]

....A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels
........

Tell me this is not the same Judith Miller that was completely discredited because of the propaganda she peddled about Iraq and WMD in the run up to that war at the New York Times?



Interestingly did you know that while Ireland was being attacked and planted with the natives hunted down and not allowed set foot in the English garrisoned towns that in 1555 Youghal in Cork had a Jewish Mayor called William Annyas? Or that the Holy Roman Empire had a huge Jewish population in the late medieval period which was extremely prosperous? Or that Jewish merchants began to dominate trade across Europe and to the new world in the 17thC... I think the suffering of the Jews prior to the holocaust in Europe has been considerably exaggerated relative to the baseline (how others suffered in this period).

Is the underlying basis of this article another crack at the transfer idea? It has long been a desire of Israel's to have other Arab countries take responsibility for the Palestinians (after the Israelis would expel them or encourage them to leave).

Apart from shooting the messenger, are you saying that you have no problem with how Palestinans are treated in Arab countries?

[Thranduil]

Apart from shooting the messenger, are you saying that you have no problem with how Palestinans are treated in Arab countries?

No of course not, and yes it is a serious matter - but many of those nations were generous enough to take them in the first place after Israel kicked them out of their country and refuses to take them back, it would be a bit ironic for Zionists to be complaining about how they are treated!

I am saying that i have doubts about the motivations of the writers of this article, that it is not the welfare of Palestinians in Arab countries that concerns them as such, more the fact that Arab govts - by refusing to accord the refugees a good standard of living are refusing to take Israel's responsibility off their hands and accept that the Palestinians can never go home, what galls the authors is the idea that the Arab Govts expect that one day these people should be allowed to go home (and so is housing them separately and treating them as distinct from their own population).

[arcadeparade]

There's nothing good that can be said about any of the arab countries, most of them are dictatorships. But Im sure the people in those countries support the rights of the Palestinians a lot more than their governments do, which Im sure is the same case in Israel.

[jmcc]

As we watch Michael Martin highlight the problems of the Palestinians in the West Bank and as Arab states condemn Israel for their treatment of Palestinians, one wonders how much of this is real.

Very little. It is just another cause du jour for the well meaning ignorant to empathise with. And empathising with the cause du jour is so much easier than actually doing something about the problem.

Regards...jmcc