Leo Kurtenbach (letter published in Humboldt Journal November 3) reveals a distinct bias when he mentions the Israeli bombing of homes, schools and hospitals without mentioning that the terrorists hide among those inside such buildings.
The radical Muslims have a saying, "when a child dies, we win...if the Israelis kill him, it makes them look bad, when we kill him it still makes the Israelis look bad in the eyes of the world."
Next Kurtenbach talks about the "alleged" rocket attacks from Gaza as if there were some doubt about it. To me this pretty much discredits the whole article.
Many misconceptions abound in regard to the Israelis and Palestinians. In modern history, until 1948, when they formed a government and called it Israel, the Jews were called Palestinians by the Arabs, as a way of mocking them with the name of their ancient enemy.
As for the "land," it was owned by rich Turkish landowners. As Mark Twain said a hundred years ago, it was a desolate, forsaken place where virtually no one lived. In the early 1900s, European Jews began to experience severe persecution and some began to buy swampy, malaria-infested land at exorbitant prices from the Turks in order to avoid what was shaping up to be the worst holocaust the world has ever seen. The poor land for high price was a source of mirth to the Turkish sellers.
Once the Jews had bought the land, they hired people to help them ready it for crops, paying attractive wages. This brought in many young Arab men, who, because of constant infighting among their tribes, had no industry to provide jobs.
After the war, Palestine and many other countries in that region were mandated by the UN under British control.
Britain did much damage to the Jews in order to favor the Arabs. I will name only two.
1. They divided the land of Palestine into two pieces... one very large piece for the Arabs, calling it Jordan, and one very small piece for the Jews, which they (Jews) renamed Israel.
2. A new definition was used in regard to "refugee" when it applied to Arabs. A refugee is a term applied to someone who is forced to flee their permanent home...for the Arabs they were considered refugees if they had lived there for two years.
As soon as the Jews formed a government and called their country Israel, the surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel, urging all the Arabs living there to get out in order to avoid the slaughter they would visit on the Jews.
Israel, contrary to what Kurtenbach says, urged these Arabs to stay and remain as Arab Israelis. Some chose to do that and they have today, in Israel, one of the best standards of living in the Middle East.
Most Arabs fled into surrounding areas where they were refused patriation by their fellow Arabs when they lost the war.
Israel, tiny though it is, managed to patriate the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced, with only the clothes on their back, out of the surrounding Arab countries. Yes, I, too, have a bias. I believe God has resurrected the nation of Israel as He said He would. That in no way implies God does not also love the Arabs, there is plenty of room for them. The Arabs must learn to accept Israel in the Middle East.
