Frozen in time, addicted to pity
This excellent piece, which explains why the 'Palestinians' are different from every other refugee in the World, was in Saturday's National Post of Canada (Hat Tip: Susana K-M). Refugees? Canadians, even if their families have lived here for centuries, know something about refugees. We know Hungarians, we know Vietnamese, we know many others. We admire their energy and their accomplishments. Observing them can be a bracing lesson in human tenacity under adverse circumstances.Read the whole thing.
But that pattern doesn't cover Palestinian refugees. They are a special case. For many reasons, various populations across the planet are displaced; only the Palestinians cling to their "refugee" status decade after decade. They present themselves as helpless victims of Israeli aggression. They await rescue-- as they have been awaiting it for three generations, since Israel was founded in 1948. Members of other history-battered groups choose to live by an urgent ethic: Get up, get going, make a new life. Palestinians have a different approach: Sit down, wait, stay angry till the world provides for you.
Andrew Roberts, a much-admired British historian, raised the issue of Palestinian refugees in a speech excerpted in the National Post on Tuesday. He argued, correctly, that Arab governments "are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago." The 5,000 or so members of the Saudi royal family could probably handle it by themselves.
Why haven't they done so? They much prefer to let Palestinians remain poor. Every wretched, ill-fed and ill-housed Palestinian can be used as a living rebuke to Israel.
What's at work here is once again a double standard that treats Jews (it's directed at the Jews) differently than any other people who were the victors in a war in which the losers were displaced.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:33 PM
3 Comments:
Its all about hate of Israel.
There's no other reason the Palestinian issue hasn't been resolved in our time and is highly unlikely to ever find a solution.
The Hate Israel cottage industry grown up around it would lose its justification for existence if it was ever to disappear.
This is one of those issues that will remain with us long after we are gone from this earth.
For a more in depth explanation of refugees Ben Dror Yemini has a must read article
http://www.mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8878
Why are the Palestinians Opposed to Ending the Occupation?
The Palestinians have totally rejected an Israeli plan to recruit the EU to build power stations, desalination stations, and sewage treatment plants for Gaza. Sami Abu Zuheiri , a Hamas spokesperson, argued that Israel, "the occupying country," must continue to provide for Gaza's needs. Hamas, which took pride in liberating Gaza from the Israeli occupation via Jihad, is struggling with all its might to preserve the "Israeli occupation" and obligate Israel to continue transferring supplies to an entity that avowedly declares that it will liberate all of Palestine, liquidate the State of Israel, and kill and expel its Jewish inhabitants.
Click here to read the full article:
http://tinyurl.com/JCPA-Palestinians-Opposed-to
-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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