Response to Phil Smaller 9-16-2015

16, September 2015                        Response to Phil Smaller

Phil Smaller’s anti-Arab diatribe (Post 14 Sept.) is full of inaccuracies. The Jews fleeing anti-Semitism and the Arabs fleeing conflict zones differs by an order of magnitude. Smaller makes the preposterous claim that the land of the former Ottoman Empire was barren and offered to the Jews by the former British Empire. How nice? The land was not barren but occupied by the indigenous population, the Palestinians. According to Phyllis Bennis, a recognized authority on Israel and its founding, by 1947 Jews comprised only about 30 percent of the population but then launched a pogrom expelling 750,000 Palestinians many of whom are still languishing in refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries.

From its early inception, Israel launched terror and mayhem against the British and Palestinians. Perhaps Smaller is unaware of the early history of Israel, when the clandestine enforcers – Hagana, Irgun and the dreaded Stern Gang terror squads drove out the Palestinians from their ancestral lands. According to British records, hundreds of violent and terrorist incidents occurred against British and Palestinians between 1939 and 1948. These included bombings, kidnappings, bank robberies, murders, torture of prisoners and assassinations of police and British officials.

This travesty was the basis for the official founding of the Israeli state in 1948.