History lessons — forgotten

According the AP (and other news sources) Secretary Rice is appealing to history in her quest for Mideast peace

“We view the situation as qualitatively different than it has been, the history moves on, people change roles, situations,” McCormack said. “That said, you can take the lessons of history and apply them,” he said. “She is a student of history and has a keen appreciation for how we can apply the lessons of history, what we can learn from those who have gone before us.”

PM Olmert also has history on his mind.

Israel is ready to put “all basic questions, all the substantive problems, all the historical questions” about Palestinian statehood on the table in a U.S.-hosted peace conference later this month in Annapolis, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday. “It is time,” Olmert said in an impassioned speech. “All questions are on the agenda. We won’t run away from any of them.”

No doubt that President Abbas will also go into the Annapolis summit with history on his mind too.

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

I don’t suggest that Secretary Rice and PM Olmert forget history. I just hope that they will be as scrupulous in bringing up history that Abbas would rather forget.

With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.” The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948. “This did not occur by happenstance, as is sometimes said,” said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of the group, a five-year-old New-York-based organization. “In fact, we have found evidence that there was collusion among the Arab nations to persecute and exploit their Jewish populations.”

When the world now looks at Israel’s founding they see a flawed founding. To others Israel’s treatment of the Arabs condemns it to being born in sin. But Israel (then Palestine) was a theater of war. In war people do get displaced. In this case most left on their own. And yet when the world looks at the other side of the equation they don’t ask why Jews were forced to leave their homes. The countries they were living in weren’t fronts in the war. Now there’s documentation that the Arab countries colluded with each in oppressing the Jews in their midsts. And the UN which has fostered the resentment of the Palestinians with their various organizations was looking the other way when the Jewish refugees were forced from their homes.

The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948. “This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees. For that reason, he said, the main goal of the campaign was to raise public awareness rather than to seek compensation. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the other components of redress, recognition, remembrance and acknowledgment of the wrongs committed,” he said. He said that a particular focus of the campaign would be the United Nations, where Palestinian concerns got regular attention and Israel was frequently the object of condemning resolutions. “The U.N. has participated in expunging this experience from the Mideast narrative and from the U.N. narrative,” Mr. Cotler said.

While the Palestinian were allowed to languish by their co-religionists, Israel assumed responsibility for Jews who lost their homes. The resentment against Israel, which is often treated as a basis for the entitlement of the Palestinians to a state, was nurtured for one reason: as an attack on the Jewish state. It was an attempt to shift blame for the wars on Israel, to delegitimize Israel, and, if possible to destroy Israel.

It’s worked quite well, as the American Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister are preparing to grant statehood to the leader of an unreformed terrorist organization. History says that Jerusalem was never important to the Muslims – until Jews controlled it. Will Dr. Rice and PM Olmert bring that up?

By all means don’t run from history, but don’t accept the fractured history of a Holocaust denier.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.