Israel

Answer 1

Combatants killed in war are called "casualties," not "victims." Even civilians who are unintentionally killed are called casualties.

Ariel Sharon led the war against well-armed terrorist combatants in Lebanon, 1982-85. This was a necessary military undertaking, to protect Israel's citizens who were being deliberately targeted by terrorist acts. So I think your question should be directed against the terrorists.

Answer 2

Most of the enmity and ire that Ariel Sharon has earned, especially in Arab circles, come from his completely legitimate military successes, especially during the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1948-9, 1956, 1967, 1973, the War of Attrition, and his direction of the Lebanese Civil War. However, Sharon was not an angel and he bears some or all of the weight for three distinct massacres that claimed unnecessary victims.

Qibya Massacre (1953): Called Operation Shoshana by the Israeli Defense forces, Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank. 69 Palestinian Arabs, two thirds of them women and children, were killed and 45 houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed. The attack followed cross-border raids from the Jordanian occupied West Bank in which Israeli civilians were killed. The U.S. State Department and Jewish communities around the world condemned the attack.

Battle of Mitla (1956): During the Arab-Israeli War of 1956 (also called the Suez Crisis or the War of Tripartite Aggression), Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan did not order any forward advances, but Sharon nonetheless decided to attack entrenched Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan. Because of their strong position, the Egyptians were able to bring heavy fire down on the Israeli soldiers. Eventually, Sharon was successful, but a total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle. Many within the IDF criticized the battle and its casualties as being unnecessary and unauthorised aggression meant to serve to aggrandize Sharon's reputation.

Massacres of Sabra and Shatila (1982):While it should be made clear the massacres were performed by Lebanese Phalangists and not organized or condoned by Sharon or Israel, as Israel's Defense Minister in 1982, Sharon had overall responsibility for the area of the Sabra and Shatilla camps, since Israel controlled that area in Lebanon. An Israeli commission of inquiry found that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the massacre and that he decided Phalangist militias "should be sent in" to the camps from September 16 to 18, despite the risk that they would massacre the civilian population there. The militias killed between 700 and 800 people, according to Israeli military intelligence estimates. In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission recommended that Sharon lose his title of Defense Minister due to the grave miscalculation with the Phalangists and this happened.

The British administered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as non-unique parts of the British Mandate of Palestine. These territories were created by the 1949 ceasefires of the Egyptian army in Gaza, of the Jordanian army in Judea (the southern lobe of the West Bank), and of the Iraqi army in Samaria (the northern lobe of the West Bank). Initially, each of the these three armies imposed martial law on the regions that they conquered.

West Bank Under Jordanian Control

After a few months, the Iraqis found that maintaining such a long-distance colonization was not worth it to them and they ceded their territory to Jordan. Jordan then annexed the whole West Bank on April 24, 1950 in a move that was condemned internationally (save for Great Britain, Iraq, and Pakistan which approved the act). All West Bank Palestinians became Jordanian citizens. However, Jordan made no overt acts to open up the refugee camps and fully integrate the Palestinian Jordanian refugees into Jordanian society, making the refugees reliant on UNRWA for assistance. Most Palestinian Jordanians made their lives as farmers as Jordan did not invest significantly in modifying the infrastructure of the area. Finally, in violation of the terms of the Jordanian-Israeli armistice agreement, Jordan forbid both Israelis (including non-Jewish Israelis) and Jews (from outside of Israel) to visit any of the Jerusalem holy sites and proceeded to demolish numerous historic synagogues, abuse the Western Wall holy site, and to use gravestones from historic Jewish cemeteries to build latrines for Jordanian army barracks.

Gaza Strip Under the Egyptian Control

The Egyptians established the "All-Palestine Government" with a seat in Gaza City on September 22, 1948. The All-Palestine Government was supposed to be the forerunner to an eventual Palestinian State that would entirely replace Israel and occupy all of the former British Mandate. Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, one of the major Arab leaders in the former British Mandate of Palestine was declared President. However, this government was merely a puppet government with no administration, no civil service, no money, and no real army of its own. All of the economic, political, and social decisions were made by the occupying Egyptian military. There was no investment in the Gaza Strip during the All-Palestine Government period and the infrastructure began to crumble. Additionally, since Egypt made no moves to grant Egyptian citizenship to the Palestinians, all Palestinian refugees (whether in camps or not) were dependent on UNRWA making a Palestinian Crisis in the area.

When Israel overran Gaza in the Arab-Israeli War of 1956, the Egyptians relocated the All-Palestine Government's official offices to Cairo, Egypt. When Israel withdrew to the 1949 boundaries in 1957, the All-Palestine government remained in in Cairo, showing how its "independence" was just a joke. In 1959, Egypt abolished the All-Palestine Government and brought the Gaza Strip under the United Arab Republic (which would later also include Syria). In this way, the Egyptians proceeded to effect a direct military occupation without actually annexing the region, meaning that Palestinians now were under direct Egyptian military occupation. The situation remained like this from 1959 until Israel's conquest of Gaza in 1967.

Post-1967

Since many Palestinian-Jordanians had crossed from the West Bank to the East Bank during Jordan's annexation of the West Bank, they formed a large population within Jordan even after the Six-Day War brought the West Bank under Israeli Occupation. Angered by their historic mistreatment under the Jordanians and the Jordanian failure to hold onto the West Bank, Palestinian Militants rose up against the Jordanian Government in 1970. King Hussein's response was to violently crush the uprising. The two sides fought a war from September 1970 to July 1971 called "Black September" or the "Jordanian Civil War". Estimates of the Palestinian dead are between 300 and 20,000, but typical estimates are around the 15,000 mark, making this event in Jordan more deadly to Palestinians than the entire Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

The Jews/Hebrews have rights to Israel because the British gave it to them after World War 2 and have the military power to hold onto that land. It belongs to them because it was gifted to them and they had the strength to keep it for themselves.

International focus groups and thinktanks have come up with solutions and there have been several peace treaties attempted, but there are too many people who are too unwilling to compromise to implement them. People on both sides are far too interested in justice and not interested enough in peace and tranquility.

None of the serious issues that inflame the conflict have really been resolved. To read about the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, please see the Related Question below.

• What are the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
• What are the causes of the Jewish-Arab Conflict?

Answer 1

The Hebrews didn't hold such a belief, unless you are talking about the concept of the Messiah, which is just a name for the next king of Israel.

Answer 2

Belief in a future redeemer (messiah) is one of the basic Jewish beliefs, as codified by Maimonides and recorded in our prayers. The redeemer will be the one who will:

* Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28)

* Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6)

* Usher in an era of world peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4)

* Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one: God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9)

* The messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David (Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1)

* The messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance.

Note on Messiahs:

It is important to note that the Messiah in Judaism is not (yet) any historically identified person, so there is nothing more definite in Judaism to "point him out" than "he will come". This is as opposed to Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i which all claim that the Messiah has come and it is Jesus Christ.

Understandably this is naturally a contentious question. There is also serious scholarly debate as to whether Israel actively removed the Arab Palestinians or the Arab Palestinians left as a result of the general violence and fear of Israeli action. As a result, this answer his been split in two sections. The first section deals with those who hold that Israel did actively remove the Arab Palestinians and the second deals with those that hold that Arab Palestinian Exodus was a result of the general fighting.

A) Assuming Israel did remove Arab Palestinians from Israel...

Answer A1

What would you do if you had decided to move into a house and people were staying in it?

Some people wanted to make a Jewish state. They made a deal with Britain called the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Palestine was part of the British Empire in those days, and Britain stated that it "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the understanding that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

So the Jews moved in, but they didn't abide by the understanding. They removed the Palestinians so that Jews could have the land.

Answer A2

There is no evidence that many Palestinians were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.

In 1942, The Jewish leadership, at a convention held in America, declared that it would not be satisfied with less than the whole of Mandate Palestine as a Jewish state. The intention was to at least achieve and maintain ethnic control of the proposed state. that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth

Professor Ilan Pappe of the University of Haifa, Israel (A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples)s says that massacres were carried out by Jews in Balad al-Shaykh and elsewhere. Each brigade of the Jewish Hagana paramilitary was given a list of villages to occupy and destroy, with the objective being to cleanse the future Jewish state of as many Palestinians as possible. In addition, some of the brigades are to take over the mixed Arab-Jewish towns and expel the Palestinian populations - this being the fate of Jaffa, Haifa, Safed and Tiberius. By the time the British had left in mid-May, one third of the Palestinian population has been evicted.

Long after the expulsions, Israel maintained that the Palestinians did not really exist as a nation - they were really Jordanians, or that as 'Arabs' they should leave Israel and integrate into the populations of their Arab neighbours. Even today, it is unusual to hear Jews speak of the original people as Palestinians, many always referring to them as Arabs, in an apparent attempt to negate their identity.

A Jewish West Bank settler interviewed some time back unconsciously illustrated the reasons for the Israelis driving Palestinians out of the future Israeli state, although the circumstances were different. She did not claim the right to live in the West Bank for religious reasons, but because the land was free. The Israelis had driven Palestinians out of Israel so that land would be unoccupied and therefore available at no cost.

B) Assuming that Arab Palestinians fled Israel for other reasons...

Answer B1

The Palestinian refugee problem was originally created by Arab leaders, many of them Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, who urged their followers to abandon their homes. The Palestinian community, Haj Amin al-Husseini, did end up sitting at Berchtesgarten before and during WW2 advising Hitler on Arab affairs and an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's Final Solution. And Husseini wrote in his memoirs, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."

Palestinian leaders did not demand a state when Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire, nor during the Protectorate when it was under British rule, nor at any other time of foreign domination. But when Palestine finally and for the first time in living history became a country of its own - called Israel, Islamic leaders couldn't stand it.

Please see the Related Link for a Youtube Video showing the direct link between the Nazis and the Palestinian Leadership.

Answer B2

Jews began settling in the Turkish Empire's eastern seaboard in growing numbers from the 1880's on. In WW1 Britain took apart the Turkish Empire and with the French began to create all of the states that now exist in the Middle East. In 1922 a League of Nations Mandate endowed Britain with the responsibility of promoting a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Modern Palestine was a creation of the British, its borders negotiated with the French. In September 1923 Britain excluded the Palestine east of the Jordan River from the area in which it would promote a Jewish National Home; that eastern region in 1946 became the Hashemite Kingdom, originally TransJordan, later Jordan. It was ruled by Abdullah, a member of the Hashemite tribe from Mecca. It is still ruled by his great-grandson - also Abdullah - although almost 2/3 of its citizens are in fact Palestinian Arabs.

In 1948 the British-created and ruled Palestine came to an end. The UN Security Council with a vote of 33 for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions, divided the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into 2 states, 1 Arab, 1 Jewish. The Jews accepted the partition, the Arabs did not and initiated war. The Jewish population was about half of the Arab population and perhaps the Arabs expected an easy victory, especially when the British were due to leave and the surrounding Arab states would attack as well. The war was fought in 2 phases: the first while the British were still in place from November 30 - December 14 when local Arabs, with some help from outside, fought the local Jewish community who fought back; the second when the British left; Israel was declared a state and all the neighboring countries did indeed attack. In the initial stages of fighting Israel defended with mainly hand weapons and a little artillery. Later Israel brought in heavier equipment and things went her way.

Israel was a little country, but long and narrow with problematic logistical lines. Different army commanders handled their problems in different ways: up north if a village attacked Israeli troops, generally the villagers were forcibly removed, to keep the supply lines safe [there were not enough troops to guard these places], down south sometimes the same. At the same time some Arab leaders called on the Arabs to get out of the way of attacking armies who would then throw the Jews out and they could then return. Some fled the war zone, some fled because others had fled. The Arab population was poorly served by their local leadership [the Arab Higher Committee] who called on the people to stay put and fight, but who themselves had largely [12 of 15 members] removed themselves and their families from harm's way and were sitting in Beirut and Damascus

There was never a government decision to expel the Arabs from areas conquered; there was never such an army directive, Ramle and Lydda excepted. Sometimes local army commanders took upon themselves such an action usually as described in the paragraph above. On the other hand, there was also not a single Jew left alive in territories captured by the Arabs and often Jewish captives were tortured to death, sometimes just for pure enjoyment - see for example Arthur Koestler's description of the capture of Mishmar HaYarden in his Promise and Fulfillment. This may well account for what an English sergeant told an American newsman on the day of Jaffa [an Arab town]'s surrender: The Arabs were frightened to death when they imagined to themselves that the Jews would do to them half of what they would have done to the Jews were the situations reversed.

A lot of propaganda has been written about Jewish expulsion of Arabs in 1948. The only serious study to date which examined, village by village, battle by battle, what actually happened to the Arab residents, can be found in Benny Morris: 'TheBirth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'Cambridge University Press ,2004. [This is not a book of the war but of how the refugees became refugees. On the war itself you can see his 2008 book "1948".] Morris, when he writes history, bases it on clear evidence, preferably written documentation. One cannot say the same of his newspaper interviews.

I disagree with some of his conclusions but it is still the best study around. Personally I think he underestimates the effect of the Arab leadership abandoning the arena. In the larger towns the only place where what happened was clearly documented [by the British who had called for a meeting of the fighting parties] was in Haifa where the Arab population chose to leave. Overall some 20 % of villages [this figure does not relate to the population as a whole] were clearly forcibly removed; the others fled for a variety of reasons. Israel took a decision not to allow back those who were outside the borders as of June 30 1948. That in a nutshell was how the Palestinian refugee problem was born.

It has unfortunately been perpetuated by UNRWA which is a UN body set up to resolve the problem and which regards children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees as refugees themselves, even when they are citizens, as in Jordan, of other countries. In Lebanon and Syria they are maintained in UNRWA camps and not allowed rights or jobs. The humanitarian problem could be solved were the Arab host countries genuinely concerned with the welfare of Palestinian refugees. The problem could also probably be resolved by putting them under the aegis of UNHCR which handles refugees in the rest of the world and where there are no multi-generational refugees at all. They have been repatriated or resettled. But no-one seems genuinely interested in resolving the humanitarian concerns.

Proponents of Palestinians returning to their grandparents' or great-grandparents' homes overlook the fact that 61 years have passed and Israel's population [Jews and Arabs] has grown from well under a million in early 1949 to over 7,000,000 today. By and large the homes no longer exist. This scenario is as unrealistic as it is for the millions of refugees post-WW2 returning to their homes, including Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, all of whom are no longer in refugee camps, but resettled in Israel and elsewhere.

Answer B3

(Note: Although the terms Israel/Israeli and Palestine/Palestinian are not the proper terms, given the time period, they will be used anachronistically to keep terminology consistent.)

The question as posed suggests active removal, which is a little strong in my view compared to where the historical facts seem to stand. Active removal requires intent and plans from the top down. The plans typically cited by those who believe that the Israeli militias (like the Haganah or Palmach) had an intent to remove the Palestinians are Plan Dalet, which consolidated and directed Israeli operations. However, even the words of Plan Dalet are vague as to whether Israeli positions and towns are to be held at all costs means that all Palestinian villages should be cleansed or destroyed.

The actual events during the Jewish-Arab Engagement of 1947-1949 seem to show a general Israeli willingness to prevent the full integration of the Palestinian Arab population into a Jewish State. It's the idea of "we won't force them out, but it wouldn't be so bad if they left". This feeling of casual disregard was a result of the mistrust built up between Israelis and Palestinians. There were numerous instances of Palestinian Arab Civilians giving Palestinian Militants information on Israeli Militia movements, which resulted in successful ambushes against Israeli personnel. Sometimes Israeli Militiamen were attacked in their sleep. It should be incredibly illustrative that in order to gain the Israelis' trust, the Palestinian Arab Sheikh of Abu Ghosh had to give his five daughters over to Israeli custody for the Israelis to believe that he would pose no threat to them. Abu Ghosh is considered by many Israelis to show how Palestinians could easily have become Israelis. So, naturally, due to this mistrust, Israeli soldiers would on a few occasions, commit atrocities against Palestinian towns (like Deir Yassin) to make Palestinians more fearful of betraying Israelis and to make them more willing to abandon their homes.

This played right into the reciprocal Palestinian Arab interest to play up Israeli violence and militancy. They would add casualties to actual events and allege similar acts where none had occurred. This had the dual goals of making Israel appear worse than it was for international consumption and to make Palestinian civilians flee. The reason the Arabs wanted the Palestinian civilians to flee was that they could attack the Israelis more strongly without fear of collateral damage. Additionally, they would look like liberators when they cleansed the Israelis from the land and brought the Palestinians back to their homes.

Therefore, the two sides with wildly disparate motivations led to a general fearmongering among Palestinian Arabs, which led to their mass departure. In 1947-1949, approximately 720,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from Israel. From 1948-1955, approximately 850,000 Jews fled from Arab countries due to acts of retaliation in those countries for Israeli actions.

A quick note on the "Arab-Nazi" connection. Both sides (Answer A2 and B1) are right. The Palestinian Arab Militia Leaders: Al-Husseini and Al-Qawuqji were both affiliated with the Nazis, with Al-Husseini actively helping to integrate Muslim Bosniaks into the Nazi SS. While the majority of Palestinians did not accept Nazism or sympathize with it, a good portion of Nazi Anti-Semitism was incorporated in to Arab Nationalism, meaning that the people were more radicalized against Jews than they would have been if their leaders were not former Nazis.

Answer 1

there is no one who woulld let them move anywhere

Answer 2

Regardless of the fact that nobody would ask this of any other country, here are a few reasons why Israel is not going to pick up and leave.

1) I Was Born Here!: Most Israelis today were born in Israel, have Israeli nationality, go to Israeli schools, and work Israeli jobs. They have lives, families, and history in Israel. Why should they be forced to abandon everything they've built to feed a dream based on non-truth. Additionally, there are 7 million Israeli citizens while there are only 4 million Palestinians outside of Israel's borders (this number includes Gaza and the West Bank). If anybody should be forced to move on pure numbers, it should be the Palestinians.

2) Palestine was violent: The idea that there was peace specifically in Palestine prior to World War II is fallacious. Palestine had been the site of numerous militias and violent activities perpetrated by both Arab Jihadists and Zionist Settlers during the Interwar period. Prior to World War I, there were violent attacks by Muslims under the protection of the Ottoman Banner on Jews and Christians in the territory to recover extra funds for the government. The idea that the British Mandate of Palestine was peaceful actually runs counter to historical evidence.

3) Mizrahi Jews: Upwards of 40% of the Jewish community in Israel is actually from Arab countries, not the United States or Europe. They fled under pain of death at the same time as the Palestinians did and in roughly equivalent numbers. The Arab States where they were living were inhospitable at that point (counter to Arab retellings of the story) and have become even more Anti-Semitic with the Rise of Islamism in the Arab World. As a result, if Israel were to un-exist, they would be relegated to torture and murder in the countries of their origin.

4) Historical Connection: All of the above regions fail to note how important the Land of Israel is to the Jewish people. It is the location of their holiest sites, which have been and continue to be abused and attacked by the Muslims who live there (such as the Cave of Machpelah). Therefore, the idea of leaving those sites to Muslim control again is unthinkable. Jews consistently find archaeological evidence of their past and of their ancestry. Ahad Ha'am, an early Zionist poet, explained that the Jewish Soul is intrinsically connected to his history and in the same way that a German-American can never be as properly German as a German in Germany, the People of Israel can never be as properly Jewish if they are not in the Land of Israel. The relics in that land speak to a Jewish sensibility and character.

5) European Anti-Otherism: The European concept of a nation-state was dependent on the idea that all of the people in any particular nation were of the same ethnic stock and heritage. Jews were branded by this system to be "the Other" and were regarded at best as possible equals and at worse as traitors, spies, thieves, and fifth columns. When the Dreyfus Affair turned out marches in Paris that said "Death to the Jews" on account of a kangaroo court against a particular guiltless Jew, it became clear that the Jew could not be integrated into Europe. After the Holocaust, the strongest proof that the Jew and the European Nation-State were irreconcilable, this view persists. In Europe, it is now directed at the Moslems since the Jews are not large enough of a threat to the European System.

6) Historical Myth of Andalucia: The idea that Jews, Christians, and Muslims were at peace with one another is a myth. The lack of constant violence is not peace or else what is going on inside of Iran (i.e. massive amounts of torture and vote-rigging by fundamentalist ideologues) would be peace. The Muslim idea of the "Andalucian Solution" is not based on historical fact or precedent. In Andalucia, sure Jews lived in relative security and prosperity for the Middle Ages. It did not come close to peace, though, in that Jews were still repressed, still taxed, and still subject to occasional pogroms. The question supposes that this system, one that rejects universal rights and freedoms applicable to all people, is viable today and would be desirable to non-Muslims is preposterous and absurd.

7) Immigration and Quota Laws: The United States and Europe have quota regulations and laws restricting the ingress of people from foreign lands. Even if the Jews wanted to leave, which they don't, they would not be able to do it with any real immediacy. Furthermore, most places in Europe where Jews came from no longer have any real Jewish population and would cause problems and strife in their areas of Europe.

8) American Jews: Most of Israel is of Old-World Provenance. Since the United States was beset with few pogroms and general tolerance for different religions, Jews in the United States never emigrated en masse to Israel. Some did, but most stayed behind. As a result if all of the American and American descended Jews returned to the United States, Israel would have lost less than 5% of its Jewish population.