Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

"“Our freedom! Our freedom!” he replies fervently. “We are a people exiled and held under the yoke of tyranny. We number nearly four million. Three million of us now live in exile—in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Persian Gulf countries, and in scattered groups throughout the world. Only six hundred thousand of us remain in that part of Palestine that became Israel.

“About half of the Palestinian people living outside Israel are still considered refugees, and about twenty percent continue to live in refugee camps. In our refugee school, I see the psychological effect of the prolonged stays in camps: an atrophy of initiative, an increased tendency toward passivity and fatalistic attitudes. It seems contradictory to say our young students are passive, with loss of self-confidence and increased dependence, and at the same time to say that they have mounting drives of vengeance. But their hatred builds on their lack of freedom. Israel forcibly produces a generation of tongueless people, and we will, in the end, speak with fire.

“For thirteen years, the Israelis have chosen not to hear us and not to see us. An Israeli premier, Golda Meir, said ‘There are no Palestinian people.’ But ignoring us does not make us go away. Nor will the Israelis prevent our attaining national independence. Since Israel became a state scores of nations have won national independence, including some that number no more than a few hundreds of thousands. No power on earth can stop a people from throwing off foreign rule, once they have made up their mind to do so. Israel with all its guns and power will not stop us.

“The Israelis give two reasons for not allowing refugees to return to their homeland,” the administrator continues. “First, the Israelis say the Palestinians who returned home would create a problem of security in case of war with the Arab states. But Palestinians within Israel are peaceful and quiet compared with Nahla and the thousands like her trapped in refugee camps. The Palestinians within Israel do not wish to be punished or expelled. The refugees such as Nahla, however, have nothing to lose. She will risk life itself to escape.

“The Israelis say, as the second reason why they will not permit Palestinians to return to their homeland, that to do so would make Israel bi-national and they don’t want that. They want the state to remain Jewish. The Zionists from the beginning, although they themselves were secular, wanted a totally Jewish state. This is why they felt forced to drive out the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. And that is why they rejected the Palestine Liberation Organization’s solution of a democratic state in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims would have equal rights."

The above is an excerpt from the post i am referring to, a very long one.

This post was not intended, but was a 'NOW' impulse driven by a further rush of empathy with the plight of the Palestinian refugees. I felt the excerpt drew some valid factual parallels with the original motivations for the establishment of Israel.

If you are interested in context within the entire article itself, in scrolling down the above excerpt appears at about 13cm
.. hmmm .. that is 5.1 inches for you who continue to hang on to the inch system .. the Imperial system .. excerpt ..

"This article is about the post-1824 measures used in the British Empire and countries in the
British sphere of influence. For the units used in England before 1824, see English units. For
the system of weight, see Avoirdupois. For United States customary units, see Customary units.

The system of imperial units or the imperial system is the system of units first defined in the British
Weights and Measures Act of 1824,... continued .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

Why the USA continues to cling to this cumbersome relic of your British
heritage is beyond me. C'mon, America, get wid da times .. LOLOL ..

Embrace the metric system which is much simpler .. support the Palestinian refugees ..