A Dear John Letter…from Michael Kuttner
In response to my recent article about summer vacation in Israel amidst rockets falling, a response was posted. As the comments are very pertinent and indicative of widespread misinformation amongst the general public I decided to pen my reply here so that it receives wider circulation and also because I can elucidate at greater length.
Dear Michael
It is not right that your grandchildren should have to live like this.
However your article ignores the elephant in the room.
Gaza is a giant refugee camp.
The people there were forcibly expelled from their homeland so that your people could come from Europe, America, and Australia or wherever they were before.
You have the right of return.
The native people don’t.
If you were in their shoes what would you be doing?
John
Here is my reply:
Dear John
Thank you for your comments. You have asked me for some ideas so I will try and answer your assertions as concisely and clearly as I can manage. You may find my assertions hard to believe but I can assure you that every one of them is factual and can be verified from historical records. The historical revisionism to which you have fallen prey is widespread and merely proves that if one repeats a lie long enough it eventually sinks into the minds of decent people and becomes accepted as the truth.
Far from ignoring the elephant in the room, as you wrote, I believe that I had in fact pointed out the terrorists in the room. As this apparently was not clear enough let me make it clearer.
You can legitimately wonder why after 66 years there are still refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere for that matter. The answer of course is very simple. Those responsible for causing the refugee problem in the first place (more on this shortly) have ensured during more than six decades that these people should be destined to live as refugees forever. Their own leaders have fed them illusions and lies which promise them a return to places from which Jews will be cleansed and murdered. Instead of providing them with decent housing and employment every effort is made to keep them homeless, jobless and dependent on handouts. The UN through UNRWA is complicit in this campaign. Successive generations are educated on a diet of hate, delegitimisation and false promises. Unlike refugees from other conflicts Fatah and Hamas have no desire to alleviate and solve this humanitarian scandal and the aim has always been and still remains to use these refugees as weapons against Israel.
Some very important points need to be stressed.
If the Arab States had accepted the 1947 UN partition plan for a Jewish and Arab (no Palestinians then) State, there would have never been any refugees. Instead they rejected the very idea and embarked on a war of extermination against the Jewish State. They lost and in the process refugees were created although many Arabs remained and are today Israeli citizens. Bear in mind that since 1947 most Arab countries have rejected every opportunity to live in peace with Israel and accept a realistic solution to the refugees. With the creation of India and Pakistan, millions of people were displaced and a massive exchange of populations took place. These people were resettled and started new productive lives.
In a similar situation nearly a million Jews were forced to flee Arab countries and were resettled in Israel. There are no refugee camps in Israel because the problem was averted by absorbing the destitute newcomers and providing them with hope for a better life. If we could do it, why could not the Arabs? The answer is very simple. They do not want to solve the problem and would rather keep their brethren in perpetual penury. That is why, John, you can witness the misery in Gaza. By the way do you realize that when Israel left Gaza it handed over to the Palestinian Authority houses, factories, glass houses and agricultural infrastructure which would have formed the basis for economic prosperity and provided housing for the refugees? Are you aware of what happened to these facilities? They were destroyed because in the evil and warped thinking of those who took over it was better to destroy rather than build and develop. The millions provided by the international community for developing Gaza were used instead to feather the nests of many and to purchase weapons and rockets and build tunnels, all for one purpose. I am sure you can guess what that purpose is but just in case you are not sure let me spell it out. Every cent donated and every waking hour has been utilized to further one aim, namely the furtherance of terror against Israel.
I have already explained that there would be no refugees if the Arab leaders in 1947 and since then had really cared for peace and the welfare of their own people. Read the speeches given at the UN in 1947 and 1948 by Arab representatives. Their threats and hate filled predictions are all on record as are subsequent exhortations telling their own kith and kin to flee because soon they would return over the bodies of massacred Jews to claim conquered territory. That is why the refugees ended up in Gaza amongst other places and the continuing campaign to destroy Israel is the reason they are still living in squalid conditions and fed on a daily diet of hate.
Dear John, you also seem oblivious to the fact that Jews have been a permanent presence in Israel for over 3,000 years, long before Islam, Arabs and Christianity were even thought of. Jews are returning to live in their ancestral homeland. Contrast that with the colonization of Australia and New Zealand when settlers settled in countries they had no connection with. If any group of people can be called natives of Israel it is the Jews not as you mistakenly assert, the latter day Palestinian Arabs. They had a chance in 1947 to have their own country. They had another chance between 1948 and 1967 when Jordan illegally occupied Judea & Samaria and Egypt occupied Gaza. During all that time they engaged in terror against Israel so as you can see this is not a new development
In other words each and every time they were offered or had the opportunity to attain sovereignty, they blew it. The only thing they wanted and the Fatah/Hamas still authorities desire today is the disappearance of the Jewish State. Given that aim which is clearly stated in the charters of Hamas and Fatah, what exactly do you expect us to do? Read the charters, research what is being peddled to the masses in Arabic (plenty of English translations available via PMW, MEMRI and CAMERA) and then you will gain a much better understanding of reality on the ground.
Finally, you ask me what I would do if I was in the shoes of those in Gaza. My answer is very simple. Firstly, I would have got the hell out of the place years ago when Israel was in control, after previous bouts of terror. Secondly, I wouldn’t have voted for Hamas (75% of Gazans did). Thirdly, I would be furious that I and my neighbours were being held hostage as human shields while the brave Hamas leadership was hunkered down safely beneath the main hospital and in Qatar. I realize that it is too late for the ordinary innocent citizens to speak up because they have been kidnapped by terrorist gangs and thugs. Those who have not been brainwashed into hating Jews are too terrified to speak out. Any Christians left in Gaza have been hounded and persecuted and Churches burned.
The only solution is to free the inhabitants of this blighted territory from the grip of the terrorists much in the same way that the Allies liberated Germany from the Nazi gang. Then, as in 1945 a programme of deHamasfication must take place so that eventually a generation grows up which is attuned to the virtues of democracy and safeguarding of civil and religious rights for all.
You are right – my grandchildren do not deserve to live in fear of terror and rockets. Likewise Gaza grandchildren should be able to live a normal life. However this will only be achieved when those in Gaza and indeed elsewhere finally come to the realization that the Jewish State is not going anywhere and leaders of Arab/Islamic countries abandon their worship of death and martyrdom and decide to embrace the concepts of universal justice, peace and tolerance which the Jewish prophets of old proclaimed from the very places where Jews now live once again.
Best wishes
Michael.
In general a very good reply, but it fails to respond to the right of return issue.
Michael should have pointed out to John that the Jewish people are the natives and, as in the case of other nations, the native people and their descendents have a right of return from wherever they have lived.
The Arabs who left were predominantly responding to calls to clear the path for the armies that they imagined would be victorious or they were hostiles who presented a threat during the ’48 war. The ones who remained were allowed to stay and enjoy full citizenship of Israel,even if they side with Israel’s enemies.
If John truly believes that native folk should have a right of return, then by his logic, most of the people in refugee camps should return to Arabia. The rest should return to parts of the former Ottoman Empire from which they migrated to what became Palestine after the Jews built up the economy which had been killed off as all economies under mohammedan corruption, ineptitude and exploitation.
The Palestinians were invented by the KGB in 1964 and they are the only people on earth who inherit that status. They invented their right of return as a tool to flood the nations state of another people, the Jews, in order to destroy it.