A response to Elya Katz

I would like to thank Elya Katz for his quick rebuttle over a piece he had posted from www.lekarev.org. In his response he offers counterpoints to my assumptions about Sderot and the events of Deir Yassin.

Elya: If one applies The Philistine’s logic universally, why do the people of Gaza not simply leave? After all, many proponents of the Arab cause claim these people are in continual mortal danger from the “Zionists”. I challenge him to visit Gaza and offer that as a solution to the difficulties plaguing the area.

Response: I would attribute the resistance to further dispersion on the original mass movements of 1948 and 1967. As illustrated by the recent event in Gaza one can see that the people do want to leave their land again. We all know what happened last time political refugees fled the holy land.

Elya: This logic of reminds me of the story of a businessman at a meeting. He has severe body odor and everyone is gagging for air. When his poor grooming habits are pointed out, and he is told to make the necessary changes or he will be fired, he responds that everyone should just “get used to it”

Response: This story would work nicely if it were not for the fact of Gaza being occupied by Israel. And before he turns this on me, occupied on the governmental level. All goods and money must pass through Israel, as we have seen with the last “blockade” Israel maintains control of the region for all intents and purposes. The events in Gaza are not self imposed, they are simply reactions to Israeli policy.

Elya: Not all of of the Arabs in Israel left. Many stayed and found that the “Zionists” weren’t out to massacre anyone. Here’s the deal: The Jewish people merely recognize their right to self-defense. Anyone who challenges the Jewish people’s right to life will soon find out what a risk they involve themselves in by toying with such folly.

My response: If he had read further he would see that I addressed the palestinians who did not leave the region. Don’t the Arab people have a right to self defense? By last count the death toll of Arab to Israeli since 2000 has been 4 to 1. This is not a defense, this is massacre.

Elya: Now, I want to address the controversy surrounding the village of “Deir Yassin” during Israel’s War of Independence. The Philistine states that Deir Yassin had declared themselves to be neutral in 1948.

Response: The village was in fact neutral. Like most human beings the residents wanted no part in the fighting especially since Palestine was still under British control.

Elya: Another reason Deir Yassin is cited so frequently by the Arab opponents to Israel’s existence is because there really isn’t much else to point to in Israel’s history. Contrast this to the many massacres perpetrated against the Jewish people by the Arab world.

Response: I am not going back 2000 years and I am not speaking about all Arabs. I am addressing Palestinians and Israeli colonialists.

Elya: As far as the long list of Arab villages that The Philistine claims Israel destroyed, how about being fair? It’s one thing to cite a bunch of alleged Arab villages. Let’s see some sources (outside of The Philistine) that prove 1) that these villages existed and 2) that it is the fault of unfair Israeli aggression (vs. self defense) that they no longer exist. The title of a credible history book or two would be helpful. Or a link. Or something…

Response:

Several authors have conducted studies on the number of Palestinian localities which were abandoned, evacuated and/or destroyed during the 1947-1949 period. Based on their respective calculations, the table below summarises their information^[72].

Reference	Towns	Villages	Tribes	Total
Morris	10	342	17	369
Khalidi	1	400	17	418
Abu Sitta	13	419	99	531

Source: The table data was taken from Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. Publishers: COHRE & BADIL, May 2005, p. 34.
Note: For information on methodologies; see: Morris, Benny (1987): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Khalidi, Walid (ed.): All that Remains. The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, D.C: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992, App. IV, pp. xix, 585-586; and Sitta, Salman Abu: The Palestinian Nakba 1948. London: The Palestinian Return Centre, 2000.

According to COHRE and BADIL, Morris’s list of affected localities, the shortest of the three, includes towns but excludes other localities cited by Khalidi and/or Abu Sitta. The six sources compared in Khalidi’s study have in common 296 of the villages listed as destroyed and/or depopulated. Sixty other villages are cited in all but one source. Of the total of 418 localities cited in Khalidi, 292 (70 percent) were completely destroyed and 90 (22 percent) “largely destroyed”. COHRE and BADIL also note that other sources refer to an additional 151 localities that are omitted from Khalidi’s study for various reasons (for example, major cities and towns that were depopulated, as well as some Bedouin encampments and villages ‘vacated’ before the start of hostilities). Abu Sitta’s list includes tribes in Beersheba that lost lands; most of these were omitted from Khalidi’s work

Another study, involving field research and comparisons with British and other documents, concludes that 472 Palestinian habitations (including towns and villages) were destroyed in 1948. It notes that the devastation was virtually complete in some sub-districts. For example, it points out that 96.0% of the villages in the Jaffa area were totally destroyed, as were 90.0% of those in Tiberiade, 90.3% of those in Safad, and 95.9% of those in Beisan. It also extrapolates from 1931 British census data to estimate that over 70 280 Palestinian houses were destroyed in this period

Wiki

Elya: Second, what about all the destroyed Jewish homes, communities and confiscated personal wealth inflicted upon the Jewish people who’d lived in the Arab world for hundreds, and even thousands of years? What terrible crime did those of us who lived in the midst of our Arab neighbors commit? We suffered too. Terribly

Response: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_Judaism#Historical_interaction
Jews lived better lives under Arab and Muslim rule compared to Christian nations prior to 1948.

Soon after the declaration of the establishment of Israel in 1948, over 45,000 Jews had emigrated from Arab countries to mandatory Palestine. Although some of the Jews emigrated because of the influence of Zionism that proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland, most Jews came to Israel as a result of persecution by Arab countries. Gilbert (1999) maintains that Israeli officials were instrumental in facilitating population transfers from Muslim countries, known in Israel as the gathering of the exiles, because there was a shortage of manpower in Israel after 1948. Wiki

Elya: Why are these [arab israelis] people no longer refugees? Answer: Because Israel values her people. Rather than leaving them in their misery to be used as pawns in the conflict between herself and her Arab neighbors, she chose to integrate them into Israeli society.

Response: See this post and this post

Elya: How about the fact that the Arab people were squatters on land that had been stolen from the Jewish people 2000 years ago?

Response: I can bury books in the sand and claim I was there 3000 years ago. Archeology has already shown that the tribes in the region were of more than one religions and race. To have a singular group claim all authority over a region is hogwash.

Elya: “The Philistine” has chosen to tie the Arab people to Philistines? This is interesting to me. Read any history book on this, but for starters, Wikipedia may offer some insight. The Philistines are generally regarded to be a non-Arab sea faring people. Notwithstanding the Roman name Palestine for the region, the Philistines as a distinct people have disappeared off the face of the planet.

Response: You can view my choice of name as a realization of my outcast status in today’s society. A smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values.

Or you can view my name choice as a representation of my physical attributes as compared to the rest of Arab society. I indeed look more like a philistine than an Arab. (Less hassle at the airport)