OLDER QUOTES REGARDING THE, CONFISCATION OF PALESTINIAN LAND...
SOME RATHER INTERESTING QUOTES REGARDING PALESTINE
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In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, few of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:
". . . There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become a the strong and papules ones." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)
In March 1911, 150 Palestinian notables cabled the Turkish parliament protesting land sales to Zionist Jews. The governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, responded:
"We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups. . . . aiming to take Palestine from us." (Righteous Victims, p. 62)
While the Zionist leadership was discussing the morality of "transferring" the Palestinian people in December 1918, Yitzhak Avigdor Wilkansky, an agronomist and advisor at the Palestine Office in JAFFA, felt that, for practical reasons, it was:
"impossible to evict the fellahin [Palestinian Arab peasants], even if we wanted to. Nevertheless, if it were possible, I would commit an INJUSTICE towards the [Palestinian] Arabs. There are those among us who are opposed to this form the point of view of supreme righteousness and morality. . . .[But] when you enter into the midst of the Arab nation and do not allow it to unit, here too you are taking its life. . . . Why don't our moralists dwell on this point? We must be either complete vegetarians or meat eaters: not one-half, one-third, or one-quarter vegetarian." (Righteous Victims, p. 140-141 & America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 71)
Edward Mandell House, US President Wilson's aid, wrote Lord Balfour predicting the outcome of future implementation of the Balfour Declaration:
"It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war." (Righteous Victims, p. 73)
While the peace conference was convening at Versailles in the early 1919, a debate has erupted whether to grant the Mandate over Palestine to the Americans or to the British. Zionists opposed the U.S. control to the country on the grounds that American democracy (where majority rule) ran COUNTER to the plan for "national home" in Palestine. A publication issued by the Zionist Organization in London wrote:
"Democracy in American too commonly means MAJORITY RULE without regard to diversities of types or stages of civilization or differences of quality. Democracy in that sense has been called the melting pot in which that quantitatively lesser is assimilated into quantitatively greater. This doubtless is natural in America, and works on the whole very well. But if American idea were applied as an American administration might apply it to Palestine, what would happen? The numerical majority in Palestine today is [Palestinian] Arab, not Jewish. Qualitatively, it is a simple fact that the Jews are now predominant in Palestine, and given proper conditions they will be predominant quantitatively also in a generation or two. But if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy were to be applied now, or at some early stage in the future to Palestinian conditions, the majority that would rule would be the Arab majority, and the task of establishing and developing a great Jewish Palestine would be infinitely more difficult." The problem at the HEART of the Zionist claim was RARELY ARTICULATED so clearly: the Zionist dream ran COUNTER to the principle of democracy. (One Palestine Complete, p. 119)
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