Not forgotten

I was searching for something on the www. last night when I stumbled upon the Biased-BBC archive. I forget what I was looking for now, but I found something interesting from June 26, 2008, instead.

Well, you may not think it was interesting, but I do because it shows that I’ve been saying the same old thing for over eleven years. It’s quite concerning because nothing has changed. In fact, come to think of it, things seem to be getting worse, which I suppose amounts to eleven years’ worth of wasting my time. 

However, I just thought it would be a good idea to post a video of Prof. Irwin Cotler speaking about the forgotten refugees, which I must have just linked to originally - in those days the magenta-themed Biased-BBC site had a comments system that was about as user-friendly as ours, i.e., not very. The big surprise (to me) was that one of the site upgrades must have propelled the video into appearing in its full glory, ‘automagically’, perhaps by some technological miracle; or perhaps manually by a loyal and dedicated techie.

As it’s tucked away behind the archive tab, all forlorn and covered in dust, I am re-posting it eleven years on because it’s still relevant. Firstly because it’s about the Forgotten Refugees (debated in the HoC on 19th use 2019) and secondly because it concludes that the very same Islam-rooted hatred of Jews lies behind the predicament of both Israeli and Palestinian refugees. Which is what I said in my previous. It’s a matter of a shared root cause, not opposite sides of a coin as many people like to believe.

The Arabs who were later to be anointed “Palestinians” by Yassir Arafat, fled or were forced to flee because of their determined opposition to the creation of the Jewish State and their decision to launch an all-out attack against Israel immediately on its declaration of independence.  A disaster based on the hatred of Jews, and the very same hatred that caused hundreds of thousands of Jewish residents of Islam-dominated countries to be turfed out of their homes and robbed of their livelihoods. 

As we all know, the Palestinian refugees were (and still are) being kept stateless and cynically used as pawns and perpetual victims for a brand of political leverage specially designed to appeal to the wider world. The aim is to ‘Free, free, Palestine from the river to the sea”. 

Not so widely known is the story of  850,000 exiled and penniless Jews who were unconditionally welcomed and absorbed by Israel. This is why the parliamentary debate is so late in the day. Victimhood and pathos are powerful emotional tools. If a fraction of the attention had been paid to this issue over the last seven decades as that devoted to the Palestinians, today's politics might have been less polarised and less toxic. 

Now for the passive aggressive remarks from that disingenuous negotiator Dr Saeb Erekat as recounted in the debate by Fabian Hamilton MP (Labour)

“As it happens, just before I came to this debate, I had a meeting with Dr Saeb Erekat from the Palestine Liberation Organisation. I told him about this debate and that we would be discussing Jewish refugees in the middle east, and asked him what he would do about that. He asked me to say quite openly that the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority believe that just as Palestinians should have their rights to return with full compensation, so should all Jewish refugees. I thought that was very interesting.”

No, Palestinians cannot have that, as it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and no, it is most unlikely that Jewish refugees (who are no longer refugees) would prefer to exercise their rights to return to the Jew-hostile countries that expelled them in the first place.

And as for the Minister for the Middle East, Dr Andrew Murrison, who should know better, opining that Saeb Erekat “is a very wise man with a great deal of experience in these matters, and the remarks that he made to the hon. Gentleman do not surprise me in the least.” 

All I can say is that Mr Erekat may indeed have a great deal of experience in these matters, but the ‘wisdom’ Dr Murrison refers to is confined to screwing the Israelis into the ground, and the disingenuous, faux generosity within the remarks he made to the hon. Gentleman should not surprise anyone in the least.