LIES AND MORE LIES ABOUT ‘PALESTINIAN’ REFUGEES
by Felix Quigley, May 3, 2005
(see also www.IrelandSupportsIsrael.com)
The Irish Palestine Solodarity Group has spread many lies in Ireland about Israel. They are a very active group of people.
This group has many offshoots and have many contacts inside the Irish republican movement which adds to the anti-Israel stand of Irish republicanism.
Their propaganda appears in many places. The founder and chief organiser of the Blanket website, Anthony McIntyre, along with his wife Carrie Twomey, is one of the main spreaders of anti-Israel propaganda, I shouuld say lies. Ms Twomey also edits another website of her own and she is currently editor of the Blanket. I believe that McIntyre is a member of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Group.
One of the things that they have lied most about is the way that Palestinian Arab refugees came about. They leave out that the war of liberation was forced onto Israel in 1948 because the Arabs would not accept a partition creating two states. The Arabs wanted the place to be Judenfrei. The above-mentioned people leave this out.
To help to throw some light on this period I will quote from the website www.Palestine Facts.org
‘Starting in April 1948, the Haganah took the initiative. Operation Nachshon was devised to open the road to Jerusalem, and in six weeks was able to turn the tables by capturing the Arab sections of Tiberias, Haifa and later also Safed and Acre. They temporarily opened the road to Jerusalem (April 20) and gained control of much of the territory alotted to the Jewish State under the UN Resolution. The operation opened the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem road long enough to allow three long convoys bearing arms, ammunition, and supplies to reach Jerusalem. This condition however, lasted only a short period of time. Immediately thereafter supplies could no longer easily reach Jerusalem and convoys had to turn back, as the road to became impassable once again. This precipitated the siege of Jerusalem. To lift the siege, the Jewish forced (guided by the American Mickey Marcus) constructed the "Burma Road" (named for the road built by the Allies from Burma to China during World War II), a make-shift winding path through the seemingly unpassable mountains around Jerusalem that bypassed the main road. This allowed the Jewish forces to relieve the Arab siege on June 9, just days before the United Nations negotiated a cease-fire.
From mid-May to mid-July, the critical phase of the war, came the simultaneous, coordinated assault on the new State of Israel by five regular Arab armies from neighboring countries. From the north, east and south came the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt. The invading forces were fully equipped with the standard weapons of a regular army of the time - artillery, tanks, armored cars and personnel carriers, in addition to machine guns, mortars and the usual small arms in great quantities, and full supplies of ammunition, oil, and gasoline. Further, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria had air forces. As sovereign states, they had no difficulty in securing whatever armaments they needed through normal channels from Britain and other friendly powers. The pre-State Jewish forces, on the contrary, had been prevented from acquiring arms by the British and so had no matching artillery, no tanks, and no warplanes in the first days of the war.
Supplies of weapons arrived in the days that followed, however, and turned the tide. Little more than small arms - in paucity- had been available to the Haganah which on May 28, 1948 was to merge with other Jewish defense groups to form the Israel Defense Forces. The Irgun Zeva'i Le'ummi and the Lohamei Herut Israel agreed to cease their independent activities, (except in Jerusalem) and to absorb their members into the newly founded IDF.
Invaded from all directions, Israel had to cope with the outbreak of a thousand fires, and to do so with limited means. Numerous settlement outposts in the Galilee and the Negev were isolated, open on all sides to Arab attack, and had to rely on their own perseverance and meager armories to stave off defeat. The hastily mobilized army had to engage in offensive action to remove the enemy from key positions, block the advance of their columns, and rush to seal gaps in Israel's defenses.
Although the Israelis mobilized almost their entire military age population, the imbalance in numbers was clear, even without considering additional support from Saudi Arabia and other countries allied with the Arab League; the imbalance in war material was even more unfavorable to the Israelis. But the Israelis had the fervor that came from knowing they only had one chance to succeed or die in the attempt. There was no alternative to victory.
The reborn State of Israel was aided by Jewish volunteers from around the world (called the Machal) who left their civilian lives and made their way along a clandestine route to help. Although small in number, about 3500, they were a tremendous asset in skills and morale for the tiny, struggling Israeli military.
The Security Council issued several calls for a cease-fire, but the Arabs ignored them. Even after a strongly-worded Resolution of May 29, 1948 ordering a four-week cease-fire, they went on fighting, and it took lengthy negotiations by the UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to bring the truce into force on June 11th. Towards the end of the four weeks, the Council appealed to the parties to prolong the truce. Israel responded, but the Arabs did not, and hostilities were resumed on July 9, 1948. On the southern front, the Egyptians resumed hostilities one day before the expiry of the truce.
The War proceeded through the rest of 1948 with a series of truces, frequently broken, to the negotiated agreements that ended the war in 1949. Fighting ended with a cease-fire January 7, 1949 and the War of Independence was formally terminated on July 20, 1949 with the signing of the Israel-Syria armistice agreement.
Throughout the latter phases of the war, Israel gained strength, fought successfully and not only ejected the invading Arab forces, but also captured and held some 5,000 sq. km. over and above the areas allocated to it by the United Nations in the original partition plan, with a considerable improvement in defensible borders.’
www.Palestine Facts.org (What was the course of the War of Independence?)
There is a good deal of historical information in the above. All of it needs to be thoroughly assimilated.
If we can focus for a moment on the issue of the Palestinian Refugees.because that is the issue in Ireland which has been most heavily promoted by the enemies of Israel, especially by republicans and by the Irish Palestine Solidarity Groups, or just by plain Israel haters of whom there are many. I will not enter at this stage the historical link between catholicism and anti-semitism but it is bound to be a factor in a country with such a catholic background.
The issue of the Palestinian Refugees keeps being whipped up continually by the above elements. Note, from the time of Cromwell, refugee has a definite resonance in nationalist Ireland. As well there is the folk memory of forced emigration. That is played on conscously.
To give this some substance let us look at an event last year, 2004.The Phoenix is not a small magazine in Ireland, and indeed that magazine became the mouthpiece for the anti-Israel Irish Palestine Solidarity. It carried a petition calling for Israel to be boycotted like an aparteid state. The whole thing can be accessed on their site.
Have you ever heard of Mary O’Rourke. If you live in the south who hasn’t? She truly is a big name. Listen to this:
‘The undersigned also urge all citizens of Ireland to support a boycott of all Israeli goods and services, similar to that imposed on apartheid South Africa. We note that recently, the Leader of the Seanad, Ms Mary O'Rourke, has suggested that such a boycott might be the most effective way to bring home to the Sharon government the depth of Irish feeling about what is being done to the Palestinians.
The time has come for Ireland, in accordance with its traditions and in conjunction with its EU partners, to take a decisive stand on these issues.’
Have you ever heard of Michael D. O’Higgins? Well if you live anywhere on the planet you are bound to. The guy never shuts up.
These two are very big names indeed who support a boycott of Israel.
Below gives a flavour of this petition of shame out of which the Phoenix will NEVER arise.
Name
Address/Affiliation
Date
Comment
Dan Boyle, TD
Green Party Whip, Dail Eireann
11 Jun 2004
Sean Crowe, TD
11 Jun 2004
Michael D Higgins, TD
President of Labour Party, Labour spokesperson on foreign affairs, signing on behalf of the entire parliamentary Labour Party
11 Jun 2004
Arthur Morgan, TD
11 Jun 2004
Caoimhghin O Caolain, TD
11 Jun 2004
Aengus O Snodaigh, TD
Sinn Fein Spokesperson on International Affairs
11 Jun 2004
Proinsias De Rossa, MEP
11 Jun 2004
Mick Lanigan
Former Fianna Fail Senator; Co-chair, Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab cooperation
11 Jun 2004
Senator Terry Leyden
Convenor, Oireachtas Friends of Palestine group
11 Jun 2004
Frank Keoghan
Secretary, People's Movement
11 Jun 2004
Joe Murray
Co-ordinator, AfrI Action from Ireland
11 Jun 2004
Patricia McKenna MEP
11 Jun 2004
Raymond Deane
Composer, Chairperson of Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC)
11 Jun 2004
And that’s just the start as there are many more, I have cut it off at June 2004.
And some people say that there is not much anti-Semitism in Ireland. So why make such a darling out of the ‘poor Palestinians’ and why distort the history so much? And why boycott Israel? And why call Israel an aparteid state?
It is also only too clear that to counter the above is going to be a mammoth task.
So let us begin! Gerald A. Honigman is a writer who I admire.
In a very recent polemical he tackled these lies about the Palestinian Refugees in this way (I break it down into points):
1. Had the Arabs accepted the 1948 Partition Plan there would not have been ONE Palestinian refugee.
2. After the Arabs decided to invade with SIX armies all Hell broke out.
3. In a war situation all bets are off and nobody is a saint.
4. In a war nobody wants to hang around. The War which they started was the PRIME cause of refugees ON BOTH SIDES.
5. The Arabs had already got 80 per cent of the Homeland (ie Jewish Homeland proposed by Balfour and the League of Nations) when Jordan was created.
6. With the new state in 1948 the Arabs would have had 90 per cent of the total pie.
Along with these six I would add these further points
1. Honigman points to how in New York there is an enclave with thousands of Syrian Jews who had been forced to flee at the same time.
2. Those following the recent fall of Saddam will know of the journalists who visited the Jewish Quarter in Baghdad. They found there 52 ageing Jews. The rest had vanished. 60 years before there had been a big Jewish population in Baghdad, estimated at 20 per cent of the total population. The same story is repeated through all of Arab and Muslim states.
3. And so on. It appears that O’Higgins et al in Ireland only have ears for the ‘poor Palestinians’.
But who are these native Palestinians? Actually the word palestinian as applied to the Arabs of Yesha has entered the scene more or less with the advent of Arafat’s PLO terror campaign and publicity drive. It was not always thus.
Such is the power of the media this is a term you are now laughed at if you were to question it. I mean, the ‘PALESTINIANS’ they were FOREVER, were they not, and these cruel Zionist Jews came and drove them out!
Honigman has different ideas and a different interpretation. The ‘scholarly’ and loquacious O’Higgins might pay attention. Honigman´s article can be accessed on www.Israpundit.com. It is called Hanania´s Unreal Reality. Published first on the Raphi.com on May 2, 2005.
These points should be considered:
1. Mohamed Ali and sons Ibrahim Pasha’s armies brought scores of hundreds from Egypt in the 19th century to fight in Palestine. They stayed.
2. Arafat himself, born in Cairo Egypt, always claimed to be born and bred in ‘Palestine’.
3. Yasser’s buddy, Sheikh ‘Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, born in Latakia, Syria, settled in Palestine. He was Syrian, along with those New York Jews, probably neighbours.
4. The Mandate Governmental Commission reported hundreds of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian and other Arab nations entering Palestine in the 1920s and 30s, the only place where there was any economic activity worth talking about, due to the influix of that horrible Zionist money.
5. The above came (much later) to be known as ‘Palestinians’.
6. Meanwhile some of those Jews from Syria and from Baghdad who did not go to New York also came and became known as ‘settlers’.But what is in a word, after all!
7. An additional but not to be overlooked point. The British anti-Jewish and pro-Arab Mandate restricted only Jews from entering. While the Brits turned refugee ships of Jews back into the jaws of the Nazis the Arabs were allowed to settle at will.
8. For every one of those registered Arab newcomers it is estimated 10 crossed the border under cover of darkness.
9. There were, of course, native Arabs in the place, but so also were there native Jews. Jerusalem always had a majority of Jews.
10. The never to be forgotten point is that a large percentage of these ‘Palestinians’ were newcomers and settlers as well! And given their phenomenal birthrate, well what can I say!
And those are the ‘Palestinians’, hammered into our conscousness by an anti-Israel media, by a corrupt Soviet-influenced neo-Left and by the terrorism disguised as freedom struggle of Arafat and friends.
The moral of the story to our modern Irish anti-Israelites (anti-Jews) is this.
Ms Mary O’Rourke, leader of the Seanad no less, and Mr Michael D. O’Higgins, leader of the illustrious Irish Labour Party no less, next time you stick your finger into the dirty carry-on of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Group and its Phoenix mouthpiece, try to check up on a few simple historical facts.
Felix Quigley May 3, 2005
