The French edition of the Huffington Post is becoming a debating ground over the Jewish refugee issue. In the red corner we have Larry Derfner, who has had to brush up his francais - perhaps because the English edition was getting already quite congested on this topic. Derfner is pitched against Israeli lawyer Johann Habib, who was actually responding to Hanan Ashrawi on the English Huffpost. Confusing, isn't it? (With thanks for her translation: Sylvia)
Larry Derfner writes:
"En résumé: "chers goys, ne vous apitoyez pas sur le sort des réfugiés Palestiniens tant que vous n'aurez pas versé quelques larmes pour nous, pour Israël, pour nos réfugiés Juifs des pays arabes, qui valent bien mieux que les fichus réfugiés Palestiniens qui se plaignent en se fichant éperdument de la souffrance de leurs hôtes".
Ce qui m'impressionne le plus ici est le fait que les leaders Israéliens ne se rendent même pas compte de combien ils embarrassent les goys en les forçant à assister à leur triste manège. Ils ne réalisent même pas qu'ils donnent une réputation de la pire sorte à Israël en comparant des Juifs Mizrahim (qu'ils appellent ainsi encore aujourd'hui) qui ont été expulsés de leurs domicile en 1948 à des réfugiés Palestiniens qui cherchent aujourd'hui l'asile."
In sum, "dear Goyim, don't take pity on the Palestinian refugees until you have shed a few tears for us, for Israel, for our Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who are worth more than those wretched Palestinian refugees who whine while not caring a fig for their suffering hosts.
What impresses me most is that the Israeli leadership don't even realise how much they are embarrassing the Goyim by forcing them to watch their miserable circus. They don't even realise that they are giving Israel the worst name by comparing Mizrahi Jews (they still call them so today) who were expelled from their homes in 1948 to Palestinian refugees who today are still in search of a refuge.
Read article in full (French)
Johann Habib writes:
"Rappelons qu'elle dénie aux centaines de milliers de juifs expulsés des pays arabes le droit de se revendiquer réfugiés, sous prétexte qu'ils auraient rejoint leur patrie ancestrale. Elle affirme, en quelque sorte, qu'il faut choisir: soit Israël est leur patrie et donc ils ne sont pas réfugiés, soit ils sont réellement réfugiés et peuvent retourner dans ces pays, avec en toile de fond, la délégitimation de l'Etat d'Israël comme Etat des juifs et l'accusation d'utilisation cynique de la notion de réfugiés. La véhémence des propos sur la forme et les arguments erronés sur le fond mettent en évidence la situation peu enviable d'une organisation (l'OLP) aux abois, gangrenée par la corruption et décrédibilisée au sein de sa population. Par ailleurs, elle laisse apparaître la crainte de l'Autorité palestinienne, que ceux qu'elle est censée représenter, ne soient plus les seules victimes au Proche-Orient après-guerre, point sur lequel elle prospère depuis plusieurs dizaines d'années.
What an astonishing column published in the English version of the Huffington Post by Hanan Ashrawi, the distinguished representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation organization)!
Let’s remind ourselves that she denies hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries the right to define themselves as refugees, just because they have rejoined their ancestral homeland. She affirms, in a way, that they must choose: either Israel is their homeland and therefore they are not refugees, or they are really refugees and can return to those countries, with, in the backdrop, the de-legitimization of Israel as the Jewish State and the charge of cynical use of the refugee concept. The vehement objections on the form and the faulty arguments on the substance highlight the unenviable position of a PLO in disarray, undermined by corruption and whose credibility among its population has been damaged. Furthermore, they reveal the Palestinian Authority’s fears that those it is supposed to represent are no longer the sole victims of the post-war Middle-East, a point that it has exploited for several decades.
Read article in full (French)
I am uninterested in what Derfner says. He's the former Jpost 'columnist' who came out in favor of violent attacks on Jews in his column.
ReplyDeleteClearly, Derfner went off the deep end. But in benighted Europe, people don't know that or may share his ignorance and prejudices. So he can write in the French version of Huffpost and get away with his absurdities. Huffpost has been shown up to be an anti-Israeli website, although they do post pro-Israel, pro-Jewish articles, usually in inconspicuous places.
ReplyDeleteBut on Derfner's absurdities. He has accepted the absurd definition of refugee offered by ashrawi, a known Arab propagandist. Her definition --also accepted by HaArets' Gidon Levy, if I'm not mistaken-- is a self-serving artifact of the PLO & Hamas. It contradicts all previous definitions, as well as the UN's own official definition.
Looking through the book by Robert Salomon, Les Refugies [Paris: PUF 1963], I find that there were French refugees who fled northern France, then under German attack in June 1941, for safer parts of the country. Those people were refugees within their own country, dans leur propre patrie.
Now what about those Arabs kept in refugee settlements in Area A of the Palestinian Authority zones? Are they within their "homeland" "palestine" or not? Is "palestine" not supposed to be their homeland? If so, how can they still be called "refugees"?
Now why would Jews want to go back to countries like Algeria, Libya, Iraq, or Yemen, etc?? They were subject to oppressive, exploitative Muslim laws, the dhimma, although some of them became prosperous. But even a Jew of high rank, like Hayim Farhi, minister to Jazzar Pasha who ruled southern Lebanon & the Galilee, was subject to cruel treatment by the ruler whom he served. [Jazzar Pasha had his nose cut off.]. No doubt other officials of Jazzar Pasha were abused at some point, which might seem to justify ashrawi's hypocritical that some Arab states were tyrannies when the Jews left and all of the population suffered from them. However, she dishonestly neglects to point out that Jews and other subject peoples in Arab-Muslim states [& Muslim states generally] suffered under the abovementioned dhimma laws which made them inferiors with the Islamic state, subjecting them to all sorts of abuse, oppression, monetary exploitation etc, not only from tyrannical rulers but from the ordinary Muslim populace.
Prof Norman Stillman, whose wife was from Morocco, mentions that he was visiting there to see his wife's family in the 1970s or 1980s, and a small group of Arab young boys recognized him as a Jew and stoned him. So the problem was not only with ruling tyrants.
Moreover, Muslims have a special definition of tyrants. A ruler who did not make jihad on the kufar, the harbis, and who prvented others from doing so, would be regarded as a tyrant.
Here's the link to the HuffWatch site. BTW, there is now an Italian huffpost site , in addition to the French one.
ReplyDeletehttp://huff-watch.blogspot.co.il/
As to refugees, I think that somebody who is driven out of the country where he is living, with his property confiscated, suffering abuse on the way, is rightly regarded as a refugee, although various international lawyers draw up all sorts of legalistic definitions to include some as refugees and others not.
Ashrawi's hair-splitting conflicts with the UN definition, although you can probably finds international lawyers arguing all sorts of definitions, especially if they are politically convenient.