Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

MEMRI is an excellent website where you can see what is being said on TV as well as the newspapers in the Arab world. Too bad you have to search for yourself in order to see those reports and they aren't shown on TV and in the newspapers here at home.

Islamic Mufti and Nazi unity

Article only one year old-Have you heard about it yet? No? Didn't think so...

We hear all the time from people who speak out on behalf of Palestinian rights, but how often do you hear about the rights for Israelis? Especially coming from the Middle East. The big lie is explained in simple terms by this Iraqi author. There are others who understand that Jews have been a part of the Middle East and their presence even preceded the Arab conquest, but rarely do you hear their words reported in the media.

File this under "Iraqi tells the truth" There are those who have told the truth from Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE and other Arab nations that actually do say they are glad the USA got rid of Saddam. They understand that it will not be easy but are willing to die to bring liberty and freedom to a place far too long forgotten by the international community of nations who do business with the dictators and depots. Too bad the average person in those western nations don't hear more of the pro-freedom writers, politicians and citizens instead of always listening to the reports in the media from the enemies of freedom and liberty and reacting to what THEY say..

In an article posted December 7, 2007, on the leftist website www.ahewar.org, 'Aref 'Alwan, an Iraqi author and playwright who resides in London and is the author of 12 novels, states that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine because their presence there preceded the Arab conquest and has continued to this day.

In the article, titled "Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?" 'Alwan called on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews' right to Palestine, because justice demanded it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He added that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society.

'Alwan writes that the Arab League is to blame for the refusal to recognize the 1947 U.N. partition plan, for starting a war to prevent its implementation, and for the results of that war, which the Arabs call the Nakba (disaster). He points an accusing finger at the Arab regimes, the Arab League, and the educated circles in the Arab world, saying that they had all used the term "nakba" to direct popular consciousness toward a cultural tradition that neither accepts the other side nor recognizes its rights - thereby promoting bigotry, violence and extremism. He also claims that there have been attempts to rewrite Palestinian history, in order to deny any connection between it and the Jewish people.

'Alwan contends that the "Nakba mentality" among Arabs has boomeranged, giving rise to tyrannical rulers, extremist clerics, and religious zealots of every description. In his view, the Arab world will never shed the stigma of terrorism in the West unless it abandons this concept and all that it entails.

To boost his claim that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine, 'Alwan provides an overview of Jewish history in the land of Israel. He questions the validity of the Islamic traditions underpinning the Arab claim to Palestine, Jerusalem, and the TempleMount, and presents evidence that religions that preceded Islam had conducted rituals on the TempleMount.

As an example of the traditional Arab mentality that does not accept the other or recognize his rights, 'Alwan discusses the Arabs' abuse of the Kurds in Iraq and of the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon.

The following are excerpts from the article:

The Nakba: A Great Lie

"When the Salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?

Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city. Whether or not it was the same Salafi mob behind that incident, one asks oneself: What language, or rather, what historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart all moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?

Arabs who are averse to such inhuman behavior must help me expose and eliminate the enormous lie that has for 60 years justified, extolled, and supported brutality. Such behavior is no longer limited to the expression of unconscious impulses by individuals, but constitutes a broad cultural phenomenon, which began in Lebanon, spread to Iraq and Palestine, and then spread - slowly but surely - to other Arab states as well.

This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba - that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

read more here:

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD189708