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The U.N. Partition Plan and Arab ‘Catastrophe’

by Jeremy R. Hammond

April 13, 2010

The following is excerpted from The Rejection of Arab Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Arab-Israeli Crisis.

In 1947, Great Britain, unable to reconcile its conflicting obligations to both Jews and Arabs, requested that the United Nations take up the question of Palestine. In May, the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created by a General Assembly resolution. UNSCOP’s purpose was to investigate the situation in Palestine and “submit such proposals as it may consider appropriate for the solution of the problem of Palestine”.

The Rejection of Palestinian Self-DeterminationAt the time, the U.N. consisted of 55 members, including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Palestine by then remained the only one of the formerly Mandated Territories not to become an independent state. No representatives from any Arab nations, however, were included in UNSCOP.[1] Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia requested that “The termination of the Mandate over Palestine and the declaration of its independence” be placed on the agenda, but this motion was rejected. The Arab Higher Committee thus announced it would not collaborate, although individual Arab states did agree to meet with representatives from UNSCOP.[2]

UNSCOP’s investigation included a 15-day tour of Palestine, splitting time between visits to Arab and Jewish communities. Seven days—nearly half that same amount of time spent touring Palestine itself—were spent touring Displaced Persons (D.P.) camps in Germany and Austria and witnessing the plight of the Jews there.[3] The proposal to visit the D.P. camps passed by a vote of six to four with one abstention, despite the objection from two members that it would be “improper to connect the displaced persons, and the Jewish problem as a whole, with the problem of Palestine”.[4] More time was spent visiting D.P. camps than the total number of days spent visiting the Arab nations neighboring Palestine and meeting with representatives there.

Public hearings were held in which 37 representatives were heard, 31 of whom were Jews representing 17 Jewish organizations, but with only one representative from each of the six Arab states.[5] Two proposals emerged: a federal State plan and a partition plan. The latter passed by a vote of seven to three with one abstention, the dissenting votes being cast by India, Iran, and Yugoslavia, who all favored the federal state plan.

On September 3, UNSCOP submitted its report to the U.N. General Assembly. The report noted that the population of Palestine at the end of 1946 was estimated to be almost 1,846,000, with 1,203,000 Arabs (65 percent) and 608,000 Jews (33 percent). Again, the growth of the Jewish population was mainly the result of immigration, whereas the Arab growth was “almost entirely” natural increase.

Complicating any notion of partition, UNSCOP observed that there was “no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas.” In the Jaffa district, for example, which included Tel Aviv, “Jews are more than 40 per cent of the total population”, with an Arab majority.[6]

Land ownership statistics from 1945 showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. In Jaffa, with the highest percentage of Jewish ownership of any district, 47 percent of the land was owned by Arabs versus 39 percent owned by Jews. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Ramallah district, Arabs owned 99 percent of the land and Jews less than 1 percent.[7] In the whole of Palestine, Arabs were in possession of 85 percent of the land, while Jews owned less than 7 percent.[8]

UNSCOP mentioned in its report that Jewish groups such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang had engaged in terrorism, including the bombing of the King David Hotel. While Jewish leaders had “from time to time condemned terrorist activities, and there have been some signs of active opposition to such methods on the part of the Haganah”, terrorism was a widely enough accepted tactic among the Zionists that the British had “found it necessary to arrest and detain on grounds of public security some 2,600 Jews, including four members of the Jewish Agency Executive.”

UNSCOP also related the characterization from the British Administration in Palestine that “Since the beginning of 1945 the Jews have . . . supported by an organized campaign of lawlessness, murder and sabotage their contention that . . . nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of a Jewish State and free Jewish immigration into Palestine.”

During one of its hearings, the Arab representatives expressed their view with regard to the Zionist “recourse to terrorism”, which was that “This aggressive attitude . . . will not fail to give rise in turn to the creation of similar [terrorist] organizations by the Arabs.” The Arab delegates also declared that “against a [Jewish] State established by violence, the Arab States will be obliged to use violence; that is a legitimate right of self-defence.”

The case of the Zionist Jews, UNSCOP reported, was based on biblical arguments as well as on the Balfour Declaration, which, they contended, recognized their “right” to colonize Palestine. Their case also rested on the false claim that “immigrant Jews displace no Arabs” and upon the assertion that the establishment of a Jewish State would “do no political injustice to the Arabs, since the Arabs have never established a government in Palestine.”

In other words, the Arab right to self-determination could be denied now because that right had never been recognized or exercised in the past (logic which would prove problematic for democracies everywhere, but the delight of kings and tyrants, if the standard were actually applied to other cases).

The Zionists also argued that once a Jewish State is established and the Jews become a majority, the Arab minority “will be fully protected in all its rights on an equal basis with the Jewish citizenry.” This was not accompanied with any explanation as to why this should be acceptable to the then Arab majority, or why the Arabs should accept what the Zionists themselves had rejected.

The entire Zionist case was outrageous. Its arguments were spurious, prejudiced and hypocritical to the extreme. And yet UNSCOP took them quite seriously. It accepted without question the assumption that the British had the right to open Palestine for colonization while it was under occupation, an action that would be expressly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions just two years later.[9]

It accepted the argument that to allow democracy in Palestine “would in fact destroy the Jewish National Home” and on that basis explicitly rejected the right to self-determination of the Arab majority.

It mentioned in passing that the Balfour Declaration had a clause stating that nothing should be done to prejudice the rights and positions of the Arab majority, commenting only that the guarantee of “civil and religious” rights excluded “political” rights and thus did not translate into a promise of “political freedom to the Arab population of Palestine”.

UNSCOP also observed that the use of the term “National Home” instead of “State” “had the advantage of not shocking public opinion outside the Jewish world”, which is precisely why it was chosen.

Furthermore, echoing the McDonald White Paper, it also asserted that the use of this term did not preclude the possibility of establishing a Jewish State; a statement that could only be maintained by prejudicing the position and rights of the Arabs.

UNSCOP also effectively accepted the biblical argument, reiterating that the 1922 White Paper had recognized the “ancient historic connection” of the Jews to Palestine and accepting this as giving Jews from Europe and elsewhere the “right” to colonize the occupied territory. (Compare this with the conclusion of the King-Crane Commission that the claim that Jews “have a ‘right’ to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.”)

It recognized the corollary “that all Jews in the world who wish to go to Palestine would have the right to do so.” But its only reservation about this conclusion was that it “would seem to be unrealistic in the sense that a country as small and poor as Palestine could never accommodate all the Jews in the world.” Again, the rights and position of the Arab majority simply did not factor into the equation.

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About the Author

Jeremy R. Hammond

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Jeremy R. Hammond
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. He is the author of "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis" and "The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict", both available in paperback or Kindle versions from Amazon.com. More...

16 Responses to The U.N. Partition Plan and Arab ‘Catastrophe’

  1. Elder

    April 13, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    Talk about one-sided!

    The author ignores Arab terror in the 1930s and 1940s altogether even though it killed far more people (British, Arab and Jewish) than the Jewish terror groups. He ignores the Arab intransigence towards Jews, he belittles the Jewish connection to the land, and he ignores the fact that the Arab agitation and terrorism against Jewish immigration resulted in the deaths of possibly millions of Jews who had no place to go.

    Here’s part of the UNSCOP report that Hammond didn’t think worth quoting:

    174. It was also Amir Feisal who, representing and acting
    on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of the Hejaz, signed an
    agreement with Dr. Weizmann, representing and acting on
    behalf of the Zionist Organization. In this agreement,
    Feisal, subject to the condition that the Arabs obtained
    independence as demanded in his Memorandum to the British
    Foreign Office of 4 January 1919, accepted the Balfour
    Declaration and the encouragement of Jewish immigration
    into Palestine. The Feisal-Weizmann agreement did not
    acquire validity, since the condition attached was not
    fulfilled at the time.
    175. The Peel Commission (1937) in referring to the matter, had
    noted in its report that “there was a time when Arab
    statesmen were willing to consider giving Palestine to the
    Jews, provided that the rest of Arab Asia was free. That
    condition was not fulfilled then, but it is on the eve of
    fulfilment now”.

    By 1947, that condition was virtually fulfilled. Is that not relevant?

    • Jeremy R. Hammond

      April 14, 2010 at 1:31 am

      1) I discuss both Jewish and Arab terrorism in the book. I don’t agree with your characterization that Arab terror “killed far more people … than the Jewish terror groups”.

      2) I don’t agree that the Arabs were intransigent towards Jews. Quite the contrary, it was the Zionists who were intransigent towards the Arabs.

      3) I don’t “belittle” the Jewish connection to the land. I merely observed that that connection didn’t translate into a legal right to kick Arabs off the land so Jews could live there.

      4) Your assertion that “Arab agitation and terrorism against Jewish immigration resulted in the deaths of possibly millions of Jews who had no place to go” is instructive. One, it’s obvious nonsense. Two, it contains an implicit assumption that “millions of Jews” should have had some kind of “right” to go to Palestine, despite the fact that immigration displaced Arabs. Your position seems to be one of implicit rejectionism of Arab rights.

      5) The Feisal-Weizmann agreement was of no consequence. Feisal had no authority over Palestine. He had no authority to speak for the Palestinian people, Jewish or Arab. He had no more authority to give Arab land to the Zionists than did the British or the U.N. As your own quote points out, it “did not acquire validity”, because his condition was that the Arabs obtain independence — but the Arabs’ proposed democratic solution for Palestine was rejected by both the British and the Zionists, as well as by UNSCOP.

      6) The Peel Commission’s reference is of no consequence. Other Arab leaders had no authority over Palestine. They had no authority to speak for the Palestinians or to hand over Arab Palestinians’ land to the Jews in exchange for the granting of independence to their own respective states.

      So, no, it’s not relevant.

  2. Jeremy R. Hammond

    April 14, 2010 at 1:46 am

    The bottom line is that the rights of the majority Arabs were rejected and violated. You can argue about this or that detail, but you can’t get around that central, overriding fact.

  3. Kevin

    April 14, 2010 at 7:09 am

    Good article Mr. Hammond! I am happy people still try to explain a better vision of history of this conflict. It is sad what happened here and a solution must be found quickly.

  4. Diane V. McLoughlin

    April 14, 2010 at 9:09 am

    Terrific job Jeremy. I have put a link to your article directly underneath a great youtube of the history of Palestine, as well as a link to Amazon for your book.

  5. SkyWatcher

    May 2, 2010 at 2:19 pm

    @ Jeremy R. Hammond

    “The bottom line is that the rights of the majority Arabs were rejected and violated. You can argue about this or that detail, but you can’t get around that central, overriding fact.”

    100% correct and from my experience every serious discussion about the middle east conflict begins and ends with this simple fact. But many supporters of zionism I’ve talked to are hypocrits or in denial.

    The other thing is the “Crime of Apartheid”:
    “inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”"

    Exchange “inhumane acts…” with “upholding expulsion and denying citizenship”. According to int. law even the expelled have an automatic right to citizenship of a “successor state”, which Israel claims to be. And it is obvious that these rights are denied to maintain “the regime”. In my view the founding of thia “regime” was a just “military coup d’etat” against the majority of the legal inhabitants of Palestine.

    P.S. Just ordered your book.

  6. C. Bendavid

    March 27, 2011 at 5:30 am

    Your entire argumentation is based on the assumption that the only ones who have rights on a territory are those who live on it, not those who have a historical connection to it.
    This is a debatable topic.
    One thing is sure however. There was no Arab sovereignty in Palestine before the British invasion. If it were the case, there would’ve been no conflict. The Arabs would’ve simply not allowed the the Jews to move to Palestine.
    However, when the zionist movement was born, the Ottomans occupied this land, there was no Palestinian or Arab national sovereignty.
    Ultimately, when the Brits arrived, they faced two legitimate claims. On one hand, the Arabs wanted to become independent and on the other, the Jews wanted to establish state of their own on their ancestral homeland.
    I don’t believe that telling the Jews to renounce to national soveignty would’ve been a just solution.
    The creation of a ”small” Jewish state would’ve been the best way to reconcile the needs of evreyone. Thus, the Jews would’ve been allowed to have a state of their own, without harming the Arabs.
    Is it what happened?
    It’s very difficult to assess, but before the creation of Israel, 80% of Palestine had already been given to the Arabs (in 1922). In 1947, Out of the 20% remaining, the Jews were offered around 11% of the territory.
    You may say that the creation of Israel violated the rights of the majority, but what about the self-determination rights for the Jewsih minority?
    The only good solution, was partition.
    Maybe the 1947 partition plan was unacceptable for the Arabs, but they offered no alternative.
    Had they put on the table their own partition plan, it would’ve enabled them to keep most of the territory left between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea. The UN would’ve probably accepted it, since it would have avoided a war.
    Compelling the Jews to remain a minority would not be a good solution.
    The outcome, would’ve been the creation of a violent Jewish secessionist movement in the Coastal Plain (where the Jews were the majority) similar to the PKK in Turkey or in Iraq.
    I do agree with the fact that the Arabs were the majority and that they had the right to ask for most of the territory.
    But asking the Arabs to renounce to less than 10% of historical Palestine so that the Jews can have a state of their own, is not what I would call disposession.
    Denying the right of a nation to statehood by invoking the integrity of a territory is in my opinion abusive.

    (Excuse my poor English, it’s not my first language)

    • Jeremy R. Hammond

      March 27, 2011 at 9:14 am

      No, C. Bendavid, it’s not debatable that between one group of people who live and work on the land and another group of people who do not, that the former are the ones who have sole rights to that territory. That’s not at all debatable.

      It does not follow from the fact that the Arabs did not exercise self-determination prior to the British occupation that they therefore should not be allowed to exercise it after.

      The Jews did not have any national sovereignty over Palestine, so saying you believe asking them to renounce it would not be just is totally meaningless.

      The Arabs did offer an alternative and were perfectly willing to recognize the equal right to self-determination of the Jews. In fact, they proposed that the minority Jewish population should have equal citizenship in a democratic Palestine, including guaranteed representation under a constitutional government. The Zionists rejected the democratic solution in favor of rejecting the Arabs’ rights to self-determination and ethnically cleansing Palestine of over 700,000 Arab residents.

      What’s abusive is the dishonest distortion of history and the injustice the Zionists committed against the Arab Palestinians.

  7. C. Bendavid

    March 27, 2011 at 6:32 pm

    Well, it depends what you mean by self-determination.
    But before, I just want to set the record straight.
    I never said that Jews had more rights in Palestine than the Arabs.
    I actually said the opposite. The Arabs were the only ones who had the right to claim sovereignty on most of the territory. Nonetheless, the Jewish people also had rights on this land. In my previous comment, I said that the creation of Israel was legitimate on a tiny part of the territory only (which is not really what happened in 47. Therefore, I believe that rather than trying to destroy the Jewish state, the Arabs should’ve negociated another partition plan).
    On self-determination, there is a real debate about whether the secession of a region from a country is legitimate or not. For some people, the secession of Kosovo, is a violation of the Serbs right to self-determination.
    However, others believe that forcing a minority to live under the rule of a majority is also a violation of their self-determination right.
    This is why the ”international community” was split on the recognition of Kosovo.
    On one hand you have those who believe that every people has the right to have it’s own country, and on the other, you have those who believe that the sovereignty of a country is more important than the claims of ethnic or national minorities.
    I know that according to international law, the sovereignty of nations prevails. In Palestine however, there was no national sovereignty.
    Therefore, I think the claims of both communities, the Arabs and the Jews were not only right, but also legal.
    Nonetheless, I believe that the creation of a Jewish state had to be made in such a way that no warm would’ve been caused to the Arabs.
    This is why I think the best compromise was the partition of the territory.
    Thus, preventing the Jews from having a state of their own on a tiny part of Palestine is not what I would call dispossession.
    Denying them this right by invoking the preservation of the territorial integrity of Palestine (or Greater Syria as they used to call it before 1917) seems to me quite abusive.
    I really believe that refusing to allow the Jews to recover a tiny part of their ancestral homeland was mere greed.
    Frankly, telling the Jews it’s too late for them to have a state of their own is disproportionate in regard to the concession the Arabs were asked to make to accomodate the Jews.

    Nonetheless, I don’t beleive that the Zionists were right and the Arabs were wrong. This conflict is a Greek tragedy and if I were a palestinian I would probably be part of what Israelis call ”terror groups”.
    I know the Arabs will always look at Israel as a colonial creation.
    It’s their right to do so.
    But you can’t expect me to see it that way too.

    • Jeremy R. Hammond

      March 28, 2011 at 12:49 am

      By “self-determination”, I mean “determination by the people of a territorial unit of their own political status”. More specifically, I mean being a citizen of a country with a representative government and constitution protecting individual rights and liberties.

      I never said you said Jews had more rights in Palestine than Arabs.

      Again, you speak of denying the Jews’ rights, which is nonsense. The only legal claim the Jews had to Palestine was their ownership of 7% of the land. That’s it. 7%. They had no legal claim to any land beyond that. This 7% was non-contiguous, also, so the idea that it could just be “partitioned” off from Palestine is in error. The Jews could have had autonomous control over Jewish communities within a democratic Palestine. They rejected that solution in favor of violence, because they wanted the whole land and rejected the indigenous inhabitants’ rights.

      The only way I expect you to see it is the way it is. Facts are facts.

  8. C. Bendavid

    April 2, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    Well, most of the Palestinian territory in 1947 was made of public land, it did not belong to individuals.
    Now you seem to accept the the establishment of a Jewish state on 7% of the territory (even though you believe that it wouldn’ve been a viable state).
    The Peel Partition plan wasn’t very far from that. It offered 20% of this territory to the Jews. Knowing that most of the territory was made of state-owned land, it means that according to this plan, most of public lands would’ve been alloted to the Arabs.

    Now I don’t want this discussion to become sterile.
    There are pretty good arguments to reject the establishment of Israel, and I know I will not convince you to change your mind.
    But unlike what you say, facts are not facts .
    There was no Arab or national sovereignty in Palestine when the zionist movement was created.
    Had there been one, we wouldn’t be talking about it now and the zionist movement would’ve looked for another territory.
    Nonetheless, there was certainly a Palestinian or an Arab legitimacy on this terrritory.
    However, you cannot just assess the claims of the Arabs, decide that they are more legitimate and give them everything they want and leave the Jews homeless.
    In my opinion, since the Arabs had been living on this land for more than 1,500 years, and because they made up the majority of the population, they were entitled to get most of the territory.
    Nonetheless, the Jews also had historic rights on this land.
    I believe this is the core element of the conflict between Zionists and anti-Zionists.
    You guys just don’t believe that a people can have historic rights on a land if they don’t occupy it.
    I disagree. I think they have the right to recover at least part of their historic homeland as long as they don’t cause any harm to those who live on it now.
    This is why I believe that to give the Jews a small part of the territory so that they can have a state of their own, would’ve not caused any harm for the Palestinians.
    Don’t forget that 20% of Western Palestine represents only 5% of historic Palestine and less than 3% of Greater Syria.
    I just can’t understand those who say that in the name of Palestine’s territorial integrity, the Jews mustn’t have a country.
    Once again I believe that every people has the right to have it’s own state, even if it implies territorial concessions from the majority.
    But I think the debate will remain stuck between those for whom territorial integrity is more important than the right of every nation to have it’s own country.

    Ten years ago, it was still possible to have a respectful debate between Pro-Palestinians and genuine left wing zionists (I’m not talking about Barak but rather real peace militants like Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid or David Grossman).
    Unfortunately, it is no longer the case.
    Left-wing Zionists are more isolated than ever.
    On one hand, we are vilified by the Likud and official Western Jewish institutions, but on the other side, the Pro-Palestinian extreme-left despises us more than the Israeli right.

    I have to acknowledge however that you’ve been the most respectful anti-Zionist I had the chance to speak with so far.
    You’re one of the very few who hasn’t called me a racist, or someone who condones racism.

    Even though I strongly disagree with you,
    Thank you.

  9. C. Bendavid

    April 27, 2011 at 7:56 pm

    Sorry for responding so late, I didn’t read your answer.
    Well, for land ownership in 1947, I’m very surprised by those figures.
    For years I read that Jews owned 7% of the land, that Arabs owned a little bit less than 50% and the rest of the territory was made of public land.
    I did some research and I found old books I read years ago. They confirmed what I believe. Nonetheless, you quote a UN report, which can’t be ignored. However, I disagree with it. I do not say that it is irrelevant, but my understanding of that report is that those who drafted it have decided to consider all the territory occupied more or less by Arabs, (because it was most of the time leased, not owned), as Arab land. This is problematic.
    First of all, most of territory was sterile. It was not necessarily cultivable (at least not with an extensive agriculture) but it could still be used to build urban communities (90% of the Israeli population lives in urban areas).
    Secondly, it discriminates against the Jews by giving them no access to public land.
    Furthermore, saying that Jews could not settle on public land because it was occupied by Arabs, means that the territory was doomed to remain exploited only by extensive agriculture. It ignores completely the possibility of having an intensive agriculture and urban areas which don’t dispossess anyone (especially if the land is not owned, but only leased by peasants).
    Finally, it leaves out the abnormality of the Palestinian economy, which was largely feudal. The territory owned by Arabs was massively owned by landlords who exploited the peasants and who prevented the modernization of the economy. The phenomenon of landless peasants did not appear with Zionism, it preceded it. It was largely caused by feudalism which forced peasants to give most of their very modest revenues to their masters.
    Saying that 85% of the territory was owned by individuals is also very surprising since the Neguev desert which represents more than 30% of the territory, was according to your own footnotes, state-owned land.
    But let’s assume you are right (which is possible, I don’t say that my figures are more accurate than yours). If you look at the Peel partition plan, you can see that it gives a little bit less than than 20% of Palestine to the Jews. It means that ultimately, less than 10% of the territory owned by the state and by Arab individuals put together, would’ve been put under «Jewish control». It’s not what I would call ”dispossession”. Furthermore, you still consider the territory under British mandate as a «unit». Once again, it’s not necessarily false, but this unit was created by the Brits. The authentic Arab political unit in the region was greater Syria. The Peel partition plan offered the Jews something like 2% of this territory. I really don’t see how this can be tantamount to ”dispossession”. Once again, you invoke territorial integrity to deny the Jewish people, the right to have it’s own state on a small part of it’s historic homeland. This is the milestone of our disagreement. On one hand you emphasize on territorial integrity, even if it means leaving nations ”country-less”, while I believe that minor territorial concessions are sometimes necessary to allow all the peoples on earth to have their own country.
    You also still believe that the land belong only to those who occupy it, while I believe that invoking historic rights can be justified when no national sovereignty is exercised on a given land (as long as the natives are not forced to give up a large part of their territory).
    Still, I can understand why the Arabs rejected the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Furthermore, I’m also uncomfortable with the 1947 partition plan which gave the Jewish state more land than the Arab one (although it planned to establish a Jewish state on only 14% of historic Palestine and 5% of greater Syria only).
    As you probably realized already, I acknowledge that Israel was born in sin (like all the other countries on earth) and I do not condone what was done by the Zionist leadership throughout history. The only thing I’m saying is that the idea of establishing a Jewish state in this part of the world, at this period of history was legitimate.
    I just don’t buy the idea that reconciliation between Israelis and the Arabs will happen only once Israel will be ”erased”.
    So far, the only ones who recognize the legitimacy of the others narrative are in the Zionist left. The Zionist left has accepted to look at the dark moments of Israel’s history and to deal with them, which is not always easy. On the other side, Western Pro-Palestinians still refuse to recognize that the before the creation of Israel, the Palestinian society was profoundly antisemitic and that in all the regions of Palestine conquered by Arab armies in 1948, all the Jews who lived there have either been expelled or slaughtered. They also consider people like Nasser who welcomed hundreds of Nazi war criminals after WW2 and who destroyed the Jewish community of Egypt as heroes.
    They refuse to acknowledge that suicide attacks are not a response to the occupation, but rather a response to the Oslo agreement (the number of suicide attacks increased dramatically just a few months after the Oslo agreement was signed).
    They of course see Hamas as a ”resistance” group.
    It’s really depressing,
    That’s it.

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