Ooh, op-ed letters!
Apr. 22nd, 2004 03:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
http://nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/L22MIDE.html
In a larger sense, it would be helpful if we could say to the Palestinian people that we recognize that their experience of being displaced by a people who had been in exile for nearly 2,000 years is a bizarre occurrence by historical standards.
How the fuck do you propose we do that? Wouldn't that make us some kinda hypocrites, considering that our ancestors (or most of our ancestors) weren't even on this continent 2,000 years ago, or even 600? Look, I'm all for returning land to displaced persons, but... bizarre occurence? In what world are you living, sir? People get displaced all the time... oh, wait, it's the fact that the Jews had also been displaced. Okay. I still think it's a slightly stronger moral stand than "we had the guns and the smallpox, so we get the land".
Walter Russell Mead is correct when he says many questions need answering with respect to refugee compensation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Op-Ed, April 21).
Where can the Jews who fled from Arab lands after the establishment of the state of Israel go to have their claims for lost property adjudicated and certified? What tribunal will hear their claims? Where will the money come from to pay their claims?
That is a perfectly valid question. However, unless they were displaced by the Palestinians, it really doesn't apply, does it? It's not like the Palestinians are the big power over there, or ever were.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, established in 1949 to care for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, receives less than 3 percent of its yearly budget from all the Arab states combined, while the United States, the target of Arab wrath, contributes close to 40 percent.
See what I mean? Nobody likes the Palestinians.
In a larger sense, it would be helpful if we could say to the Palestinian people that we recognize that their experience of being displaced by a people who had been in exile for nearly 2,000 years is a bizarre occurrence by historical standards.
How the fuck do you propose we do that? Wouldn't that make us some kinda hypocrites, considering that our ancestors (or most of our ancestors) weren't even on this continent 2,000 years ago, or even 600? Look, I'm all for returning land to displaced persons, but... bizarre occurence? In what world are you living, sir? People get displaced all the time... oh, wait, it's the fact that the Jews had also been displaced. Okay. I still think it's a slightly stronger moral stand than "we had the guns and the smallpox, so we get the land".
Walter Russell Mead is correct when he says many questions need answering with respect to refugee compensation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Op-Ed, April 21).
Where can the Jews who fled from Arab lands after the establishment of the state of Israel go to have their claims for lost property adjudicated and certified? What tribunal will hear their claims? Where will the money come from to pay their claims?
That is a perfectly valid question. However, unless they were displaced by the Palestinians, it really doesn't apply, does it? It's not like the Palestinians are the big power over there, or ever were.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, established in 1949 to care for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, receives less than 3 percent of its yearly budget from all the Arab states combined, while the United States, the target of Arab wrath, contributes close to 40 percent.
See what I mean? Nobody likes the Palestinians.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 03:09 pm (UTC)