Posted by
Javanut on Monday, March 17, 2008 12:02:35 AM
In today's Debka File, I found this article, reported no where else.
The resolution unanimously approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday, Feb. 29, recognizes the “over 850,000 Jews put to flight from Arab countries” in 1948 as refugees, no less than their Palestinian counterparts, who they outnumber.
The US president is urged to ensure that when the Middle refugee issue is discussed in international forums, any reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similarly explicit reference to expelled Jewish populations. Source article
Why does this matter and what are they talking about?
JEWISH REFUGEES & DISPLACED ARAB PALESTINIANS
135 million refugees in the 20th century fled from Russia, India, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Muslim states like Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Algeria, Indonesia, Kuwait, Sudan, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Libya etc In 1945, as a result of Nazi Germany's defeat in WWII and the Potsdam Agreement, she lost 25% of her territory and 12 million Germans were expelled.
In 1948, Palestinian Arabs and four Arab members of the UN went to war - not only against Israel, but against the UN decision for a two-state solution in Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians fled Jewish Israel, mostly to former Palestine Mandate areas, and hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab states. Hundreds of thousands Arab Palestinians remained in Israel while all Jews where ethnically cleansed in territory conquered by the Arabs. Of the 135 million refugees in the 20th century 0.5% were Arab Palestinians; in reality many were not refugees but Internally Displaced Persons (IDP.
While Israel integrated Jewish refugees right away, Arab Palestinian IDP and their descendants are the world's only permanent "refugees". At any point during the past years, Arab governments could have helped the Arab Palestinian IDP settle down to a decent life. They could have created the infrastructure of an autonomous Palestine on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that Jordan respectively Egypt controlled until 1967, or encouraged the resettlement of Palestinians in Jordan, which constitutes the lion's share of the original mandate of Palestine. Rather than fund the Palestine Liberation Organization to foment terror against Israel the Arab regimes could have endowed Palestinian schools of architecture, engineering, medicine and law. What Israel did for Arab Palestinians and Jewish refugees from Arab lands, Arabs could have done much more sumptuously for the Arab Palestinians displaced by the same conflict. Instead, Arab dictators cultivated generations of "refugees" and focused on what the Palestinian Arabs lost while attempting to destroy Israel. These "refugees" endured brutal oppression and unmitigated suffering at the hands of their host Arab dictators, and their own corrupt dictator Yasser Arafat. Palestinian leaders absconded with billions of dollars in international aid money and used the pilfered funds to enrich themselves and to raise terror militias. Source article
Basically, what we have in peace talk negotiations is the so-called "right of return" in which all Palestinian refugees would be allowed to move back to Israel and be given back their property. What the Foreign Affairs Committee did was to remind the President that much more history is attached to this issue than what is currently being reported in the media.