Sunday, July 10, 2011

Recently-Opened Archives Prove Arabs Drove Out Palestinians

Recently-Opened Archives Prove
       Arabs Drove Out Palestinians
Here is an absolute must-read about how the Arabs
really came to leave Israel during the formation of the
state. It's a rare article that is worthwhile no matter
how extensive your background.

In this case the adage that "there are two sides to
every story and the truth is somewhere in the middle"
is dead wrong:

During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of
the Jewish state has become a cause celebre among
many of these educated Westerners. The "one-state
solution," as it is called, is a euphemistic formula
proposing the replacement of Israel by a state,
theoretically comprising the whole of historic
Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status
of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can
expiate the "original sin" of Israel's founding, an act
built (in the words of one critic) "on the ruins of
Arab Palestine" and achieved through the deliberate and
aggressive dispossession of its native population.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the
consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian
"refugee problem" forms, indeed, the central plank in
the bill of particulars pressed by Israel's alleged
victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge
that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-
1950's, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz
undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings
were abundantly confirmed by later generations of
scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most
influential of Israel's revisionist "new historians,"
and one who went out of his way to establish the case
for Israel's "original sin," grudgingly stipulated that
there was no "design" to displace the Palestinian
Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents
from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and
Israel's early days, documents untapped by earlier
generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the
"new historians," paint a much more definitive picture
of the historical record. They reveal that the claim of
dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the
inverse of the truth.
       Burqa Bandit Kills Policeman in
       Philadelphia


Bad guys are beginning to use the burqa as the ultimate
disguise. In today's news, a police officer was killed
in a bank robbery involving a burqa:

Philadelphia police said a veteran police officer was
shot and killed in the Port Richmond section of the
city on Saturday. Steven Liczbinski, 40, a 12-year
veteran who had just been promoted to sergeant, was
shot by at least two men shortly before 11:30 a.m.
Saturday, authorities said.

He was responding to a robbery at a Bank of America
branch inside the ShopRite at Castor and Aramingo. The
men fled, and Liczbinski confronted them at Almond and
Schiller streets about 15 minutes later. was shot
multiple times with a high-powered rifle, police said.
Police originally described a man and a woman in
Muslim-type garb and a man wearing a white hospital
mask.


       Is This the End for Olmert?

Here is a pessimistic analysis on Ehud Olmert's future
in light of recent revelations about the latest police
investigation. On the other hand, as Aaron Lerner
comments, there is the possible "etrog" effect. Given
that the "branja" that controls Israel is so fixated on
land concessions to the Arabs, Olmert can protect
himself like an etrog on the holiday of Sukkot by
making sweeping offers in the "peace process."

When a supporter of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said
Saturday "That's it, it's over," it was not clear
whether he was asking a question or stating a fact.
This was a statement repeated in different words over
and over during the weekend - by ministers, MKs and
political allies. Like everyone else, they were all in
the dark, driven by rumors, hints, innuendos, flying
through the cellular telephony at tremendous speeds.

Even the more experienced among them, the veterans of
past affairs and the two Winograd Committee reports,
are sounding defeated. They did not know how to defend
themselves against this enormous tidal wave. On the one
hand, the law enforcement and the prosecution were
leaking that it was a most serious affair that would
bring an end to Olmert's tenure as PM; on the other
hand, the court is preventing the man under
investigation to talk and present his version of the
story.

Those on the right who wish for Olmert's fall also
found it difficult to come to terms with this upsetting
decision. Would an American court prevent president
Clinton from responding to the allegations against him
in the Lewinsky case? Or president Nixon on Watergate?
Olmert had been waiting eagerly for May 2008, a month
that would be filled with positive headlines, pomp and
ceremony: Independence Day festivities, and then the
visit of President George W. Bush, followed by the
visits of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and other leaders.
Since the Second Lebanon War he did not have it so
good. He believed that the worst was behind him: that
nothing would come of the probes against him, and that
he would make progress in talks with the Palestinians,
or would have some surprising result on the Syrian
track.

He was already feeling as though "he had emerged from
the grave," a source close to him said. And then the
skies fell and the earth split open. All over again.
This is the fifth investigation in two years. This
could be the critical mass that will break even an
experienced survivor like Olmert.

The worst-case scenario for Olmert is this: when the
gag order is lifted, the details of the case will be
revealed, and there will be a public and media outcry
that will soon be taken up by the politicians. He will
lose his support in Kadima and Ehud Barak will announce
that Labor cannot remain in a coalition headed by a man
with such terrible stigma. From that point to Olmert's
fall or resignation, the path will be short, painful
and embarrassing.


Remember, the complete stories and much more can be
found by visiting the IRIS blog at:

http://www.iris.org.il/blog.html

The IRIS Staff