The "refugee" problem

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a refugee is a person who has been forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere. The UN definition is longer, more detailed, and more restrictive than this one. This definition can reasonably be applied to many of the perhaps 700,000 Arabs who left Palestine before, during, and after Israel's War of Independence, and it definitely applies to the over 865,000 Jews who left Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s, of whom about 600,000 settled in Israel. In effect, there was a significant population between the Arab countries and the new Jewish State.

What happened next, though, was COMPLETELY different. The Jewish refugees who can to Israel were resettled by the young country, at great expense, with some social problems, but with brotherly love. The descendants of the Jews who came to Israel from Arab lands, Turkey, and Iran now account for more than half of the Jews in Israel. They have had full citizenship from the day they arrived and are an important part of the country today. The Arab refugees, on the other hand, were almost all forced to live indefinitely in refugee camps. With the exception of Jordan, their host countries refused to allow them to become citizens and limited the kinds of occupations in which they could work. For Palestinian refugees ONLY, the official UN definition was expanded to also include DESCENDANTS of refugees. These "refugees" now number about 3 million, few of whom, of course, were even BORN yet in 1948!

Why were these Palestinian refugees and their descendants treated so poorly by their Arab brothers? There are at least two reasons. First, the brotherly love was obviously not very strong, and the people in the host countries were not keen on these new-comers potentially taking their jobs. This, of course, is a common prejudice against immigrants that exists in nearly any country that has an immigrants in significant numbers. Even Israel isn't totally immune to this.

But the much more important reason for this bad treatment is that these unfortunate people are essentially pawns in the Arab world's determination to destroy the Jewish state. The Arabs' one demand that has never changed to this very day is that ALL of these "refugees" be allowed to return, not merely to somewhere in Palestine, but to their exact homes, many of which are in villages that no longer even exist. Such a return is absurd and would certainly mean the end of Israel. Also, note that no one would even CONSIDER demanding such as "right of return" for the Jews who left Muslim lands, even though their families had lived there continuously for centuries, pre-dating Islam!

So, when you hear that Palestinian "refugees" want to return to their homes in Israel, THIS is what it's really about.

The Nakba

Now let's get to the Nakba itself. "Nakba" is an Arabic word meaning "catastrophe". It's used to refer to what happened to the Palestinians in 1948. Let's review some history from that time.

In November of 1947, the UN adopted a plan to partition the part of the British Palestine Mandate that had not already be given to the Kingdom of Transjordan (later called Jordan). The plan called for 2 states, one Jewish and one Arab, and included detailed recommendations for the boundaries of the two.

So, we already HAVE a UN resolution for a Palestinian state! Why doesn't one exist? The first answer is that, while the Jews accepted the partition plan, the Arabs did NOT. Instead, when the British withdrew in 1948 and the Jews announced the establishment of the State of Israel, ALL the surrounding Arab countries immediately attacked the new State the very next day. There was no mystery about what they planned to do -- they loudly and very publicly proclaimed that their goal was to kill the Jews or to push them into the sea and to completely eliminate the State of Israel. So this was very clearly a war of survival for the Jews. Not surprisingly, it was a bloody war, with many casualties on both sides. The new Jewish state lost about 1% of its entire population, more than a third of them civilians. Entire villages were destroyed or depopulated on both sides, and many people became refugees (more, MUCH more, on that issue later).

To nearly everyone's surprise, the Arabs did NOT succeed in their goal. When an armistice was finally signed in 1949, Palestine was, in fact, divided betweens Jews and Arabs, although not very close to the UN-recommended borders. This armistice line, commonly called "the Green line", is the one we have been hearing so much about recently, misleadingly referred to as "the 1967 lines".

The Jewish part of Palestine continued to be the State of Israel, of course. What happened to the proposed Arab state? Here's the 2nd reason there is no Palestinian state: all the Arab parts of Palestine were occupied by neighboring Arab states. The so-called "West Bank" was occupied by the Kingdom of Transjordan (which explains the later name-change to "Jordan" -- they were no longer only "trans-", i.e. on the other side, of the Jordan River!), and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt. These occupations continued for nearly 2 decades, but NONE of the Palestinians objected to either of them during that entire time! In other words, what the Arabs wanted was NOT a Palestinian state, but the end of the JEWISH state. The "Palestine Liberation Organization", established during this period (in 1964), was NOT opposed to Jordan or Egypt. It was opposed to ISRAEL, which did not occupy one square inch of the currently proposed Palestinian state.

So, what was the Nakba, the catastrophe?

As I mentioned before, many people were displaced from their homes and became refugees. The exact numbers are HIGHLY disputed, and there are no really reliable records. The best guess is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 to 750,000 Arabs. There are at least three main explanations for these displacements. The most easily documented reason is quite simple. Arab radio from surrounding countries that were invading told Arabs to leave temporarily so that the Arab armies would not be impeded in killing the Jews. Of course, it's hard to tell how many of the refugees actually were motivated by these broadcast, but at least SOME must have been.

The second reason, though, is probably the most important. As the Jewish forces began to have successes, the Arabs panicked. Remember that the Arab threat was not only to destroy the Jewish state but also to massacre the Jews. Remember, too, that in 1929 and on many other occasions as well, Arabs HAD, in fact, massacred Jews. There is almost NO doubt that the Arabs feared that the Jews would do to them exactly what they had promised to do to the Jews, had the war gone the other way!

The third reason for the Arab refugees is that some were definitely deliberately driven from their homes by the Jews. Although some of these evictions may have been unjustified and unnecessary, at least in retrospect, many of them were also strategically required by the conditions of the war. Remember, this war was NOT started by the Jews, and they were fighting for their very survival! This was most definitely NOT ethnic cleansing, as most of the Arabs in territory that was to become part of the State of Israel were encouraged to stay and did stay and become citizens of Israel with full civil rights, including the right to vote and to hold elected office (the Knesset has ALWAYS had some Arab members!).

In the third post of this series, I'll talk much more about the "refugee" issue.

The Hebron massacre of 1929

This is the first of 3 posts I intend to write regarding the Nakba and the current push of the Palestinians for UN recognition of a Palestinian state. So, you may ask, "Why is this one about 1929?"

We actually have a 92-year-old Palestinian woman to thank for making this connection. Click here to watch a short video (about 1.5 minutes) of an interview with her (in Arabic, with English subtitles).

Notice how the interviewer keeps trying to talk to her about the Nakba (the "catastrophe") of 1948, whereas SHE keeps wanting to talk about murdering the Jews like her father did in 1929!

In 1929 there was NO Jewish state, the Jews were still a minority in this area, and the British were the colonial power in charge. Based on fabricated rumors, Arabs rioted in Hebron (and several other places, as well, including Tsfat!) and brutally murdered Jews -- men, women, and children -- in cold blood. It's also worth noting here that the Jewish communities attacked were ones that had been here for hundreds of years, long BEFORE the Arabs were. In other words, there is NO way that this could be construed as attacks on "foreigners" or "new immigrants" or "colonizers".

Did the British punish the Arabs? Well, while some WERE arrested, tried, and convicted, the major reaction was that the British caved in to the Arab demands and, in particular, severely limited the number of Jews that were allowed to immigrate here (and thereby escape the coming Holocaust in Europe).

For more information about the Hebron massacre, I suggest checking out the Wikipedia article about it and also some of the external links at the end of the article.

My new CD is out!

I'm very excited to announce that my latest CD, הללו בעוגב Halelu B'Ugav ("Praise with Organ"), is now available for sale at CD Baby!

For more information about this album (and my previous ones, as well) and to hear (and even download!) one whole track for FREE, click here.

On CD Baby, you can read all about my music, you can buy my CDs, you can buy and download digital versions of all my albums, and you can even buy and download individual tracks. Click here to go directly to the page for this album, from which you can also easily go to my artist's page and to the pages for my other albums.

Yom HaZikaron in the Jordan River gorge

Today is יום הזיכרון Yom HaZikaron ("Day of Memory") here in Israel. Although the name of the day is similar to Memorial Day in the U.S. in May, the day itself is VERY different here.

First, it's not actually a holiday here at all. Because it's always the day before יום העצמאות Yom HaAtzma'ut ("Independence Day"), it is an ערב חג Erev Khag ("Eve of a Holiday"), that is, the day before a holiday. Therefore, it's treated much like any Friday -- businesses are open in the morning but close by early to mid afternoon.

Second, despite businesses being open, the day is very solemn here in Israel. It starts at sunset the evening before and includes 2 long, nationwide siren blasts. The first comes in the evening at 8:00 p.m., and the second is the following morning (today) at 11:00 a.m. These are quite remarkable events. Everyone in the entire country, including all traffic on the highways, comes to a complete halt for about 2 minutes. People actually pull over to the side and get out of their cars. The reason for this great solemnity is quite simple: nearly any family that has been in Israel for some time has lost at least one person in a war or a terrorist attack. This is the one day a year when all these people are officially and publicly remembered as a whole.

David had a dental appointment today in Tel Aviv, one of the long series of procedures that he is undergoing. We have tried to schedule them all for Sundays, but sometimes it's not possible because a particular dentist that needs to work on him isn't there on Sundays (which we only found out AFTER signing up for the work and being assured it could all be done on Sundays!). So, today I had arranged weeks in advance with Berlitz to take a vacation day in order to take David to this appointment.

We started out from home this morning at about 9:00 a.m. and had gotten as far as the gas station at Kadarim (near the start of highway 65) when I got a call from the dental office saying that the dentist would NOT be in today, and, therefore, the appointment was canceled! At least I was glad that we had only been on the road for about half an hour. We're NOT pleased, though, that this probably means that I'll have to use up yet ANOTHER Berlitz vacation day to get this work done. I didn't quite pick up enough of the Hebrew to understand WHY the dentist wasn't in today, but he had better have a GOOD reason!

Anyway, suddenly we had a free, unplanned vacation day. We decided to take a dirt road that we had only been on once before. In fact, we had only been part of the way on it. It starts near כפר הנשיא Kfar HaNasi ("President's Village"), which is next to Tuba-Zangariyye, the bedouin city I wrote about recently, and heads down towards the Jordan River. It connects to another road that we had been on before.

This road (also a dirt road) goes along the Jordan River, from the highway 91 bridge over the river, to the access road to Carcom, a kibbutz in the hills above the northern end of the Kinneret ("The Sea of Galilee"). This is the stretch of the Jordan River where it flows from the Hula Valley through an increasing deep and narrow gorge to the Kinneret. This road starts in the north near the river but doesn't descend nearly as much so that, at its southern end, it's not near the river at all and it's much higher up.

The road we drove down on meets the river road when it's still not too far from the river, and, in the same area, there is another dirt road that goes right down to the river. In fact, there was once a bridge over the river there called the Kfar HaNasi Bridge. The remains of most of it are still there, but the west end is no longer connected to the bank. When the river is low, it's possible to walk across it, but no vehicle could make it. Right now, however, some of the water is flowing OVER the bridge, so it's completely impassible, and anyone trying to walk across would be swept down the river!

Here's a picture I took from the road before it got all the way down to the river:

Here's a picture from the open flat area near the west end where the bridge was once connected:

Finally, here's a picture of the cascade going over and under the bridge, as seen from a rock slightly out in the river below the bridge:

Our vehicle couldn't make it quite all the way down to the river, so I had to walk the last bit while David waited patiently in the car.

After I got back to the car, we continued south on the river road towards Carcom. The 11:00 siren sounded as we were driving along this road, so we stopped, got out of the car, and stood and waited in silence until the sirens had stopped. It seemed an appropriate place to mark this solemn moment. I should note in closing that we saw not a single other person or vehicle during our whole drive today on these dirt roads! We DID see quite a few cows (including some that had to be coaxed to move out of our way!) and a lot of beehives.

A drive in Tuba-Zangariye

Yesterday, we had some time between classes, so we decided to take a short drive. Believe it or not, there's a city that we can see from our house but which we had never been to. Its a Bedouin town named Tuba-Zangariyye (actually, I think it was once 2 separate villages that have since grown together). It's located a short distance east of highway 90, the other side of the highway from Rosh Pinna. These Bedouins, although they are, of course, Muslims, have been allies of the Jews since the early days.

It's quite a lovely city with a very suburban "feel" about it. We saw a variety of people, including many children. It seems to be nicely laid out, and there are many beautiful Arab-style houses, some painted in vivid colors. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Perhaps on our next visit!

New album soon to be available!

I'm excited that everything is now finished with my latest album הללו בעוגב Halelu B'Ugav ("Praise with the Organ"). I sent it off to CD Baby on Sunday. They should get it in about 1-2 weeks, and it will take them another 2-3 weeks to process it. Then it will be available for sale. You'll then be able to order a CD or buy and download either the whole album or individual tracks from them.

Here's a picture of the cover:

Finally, here's a link to my home page where you can read a little more about this album, as well as my previous albums.