Customer Reviews

The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile (Mr Modern Reader PB-248)

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The author writes his experience as a Palestinian refugee, gives the reader an idea of how Palestinians have been through numerous problems and crisis ever since their exodus from THEIR land in 1948 by the Zionists. He also gives a true picture of the Arab situation, how weak it is, and how Arabs even were against Palestinians themselves. The book is unique since the author combines some of his personal experience with stories, political history, and review. It's a must-read book, gives a clear picture to those who really want to know more about the issue in the Middle East.

Just finished this 155-page journal (1972) by Fawaz Turki, a passionate, articulate, young Palestinian. It's a short biography describing his life following his family's flight to Lebanon from their home in Israel in 1947. After living a life of humiliation as a refugee his outlook dramatically changed when he became educated and politically active as Palestinian nationalism was emerging as a force in 1967. He credits Arafat with awakening the Palestinians to recognizing their independent nationhood and their right to establishing their homeland without relying on the Arabs. Having read several books on the history of Israel, I found no inaccuracies in the author's account of the abuses suffered by the Palestinians in Israel's drive to expand its lands at their expense. Throughout most of the journal the author comes across as destructively embittered, hating and abusing nearly every westerner he encounters. His hatred extends to the surrounding Arab leaders who talk of driving the Zionists into the sea but who in reality are concerned with their own limited land interests and not those of the Palestinians. His journal ends in 1971 and he brings us up to date on the Palestinians situation which has them defeated in a civil war in Jordan, living principally on Jordan's west bank, in a Gaza strip controlled by Israel but claimed by Egypt, and in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

What I found extremely interesting is that at this point (1971), the author sets forth an analysis suggesting that the Palestinians have essentially two choices in establishing a homeland. (1) a return of the Palestinians to their former lands (not necessarily involving the expulsion of Jews), and (2) a two-nation settlement in which the Palestinians are given the west bank of Jordan, the Gaza Strip, a land bridge between, and a share of Jerusalem. Though noncommittal, the author appears to describe the two-nation settlement as more realistic.

It is now 30 years later and the author's suggested two-nation settlement appears close to fruition. The Israelis have ceded both the Gaza strip and West bank to the Palestinians and there is discussion of a land bridge and a sharing of Jerusalem as a part of a two-nation settlement. The biggest obstacle to this solution appears to be a hardcore Palestinian opposition, mostly in Gaza, and some militant Zionist opposition to ceding any additional land or any part of Jerusalem. One thing appears to be certain and it is that humiliation of the Palestinians must cease if there is to be any hope for acceptance of a two-nation settlement. Putting new settlements on disputed territory is one of those humiliations.

By the way, does anyone know the meaning of "ben sharmoota"?

Anti-Zionists often falsely claim not to hate Jews, only Israelis and Zionists. This 1972 book puts the lie to that recently-adopted contention, however.

"[T]his is not an objective work," the author notes in his 8-page preface. Turki recognizes that innumerable historical works have presented "devastatingly convincing" accounts of the "Zionist/Israeli/Jewish (call it what you wish) claim" to Israel.

He suggests, his isn't "a vexatious issue, nor has it much to do with the conflict now raging between the Arabs and the Zionists."

Alas, Turki contradicts himself --- importantly demonstrating that before the massive October 1973 Arab attack on Israel (described in The Yom Kippur War: Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East), few Arabs distinguished Jewish people from Israelis or Zionists. In their lexicon, these were synonyms.

The category of historical accounts Turki so readily castigates as "devastatingly convincing" includes hundreds of scholarly, meticulously researched histories--like Uri Milstein's comprehensive 5-volume History of the War of Independence: Vol. 1: A Nation Girds for War, Vol. II, Vol. III, Vol. IV and Rabin File: An Unauthorized Expose - Vol. V and such similar tomes as Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948.

They correctly document mass Arab migration from the Maghreb, Syria, Arabia and other regions that suffered Islamic imperialism, to benefit from the economic revival and prosperity that attended extensive Jewish land purchases, Jewish swamp reclamations, and Jewish farming on land lawfully bought and reclaimed--from the 1860s on --- under Ottoman land laws, then recently revised to allow sales to, and ownership by, Jews. (See also Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939)

No matter their accuracy, any Jewish author is a dhimmi and propagandist to be given no account, by Turki's own anti-Jewish admission.

Turki begins by blaming Theodore Herzl as the cause of Palestinian violence --- and every Zionist after him. Yet Zionism is merely a Jewish human rights movement --- the support for Jewish rights to self-determination that humanists afford to every other people under the sun, albeit under different monikers. This was explained brilliantly by the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, Louis D. Brandeis.

Arab assaults on Jewish communities and homes began long before the 1917 Balfour Declaration; before the outset of World War I; before the 1st, thoroughly transcribed 1896 Zionist Congress; even before imaginings of a Jewish state anywhere--much less in Judea, the ancient Jewish homeland conquered and ravaged in the early 7th century.

Yet Turki does not accept any Arab or Muslim responsibility for hundreds of unprovoked, organized attacks and slaughters of Jewish farmers and civilians--including at least 10 between 1882 and 1914, from Jaffa to Jerusalem and in the Jezreel Valley. (Sir Martin Gilbert details locations, dates and casualties of pre-Balfour Arab attacks in The Routledge Atlas of Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Complete History of the Struggle and Efforts to Resolve It and its subsequent editions.)

Rather, Turki claims (p. 18) "the initial [Arab] response to Jewish immigration, particularly prior to the Balfour Declaration, was one of indifference."

And those pre-Balfour anti-Jewish attacks represented centuries-old tradition, recognized by Sir Martin --- and voluminously documented by Moshe Gil's A History of Palestine, 634-1099, and Dr. Andrew Boston's Legacy of Jihad and Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

As to his current status, Turki allows "I was not a Palestinian when I left Haifa as a child." (Note, he "left Haifa.") That is, he was not driven from Haifa. Nor was anyone else. Elsewhere, Turki calls and quotes others calling 1948 Arab departures an "exodus," that is, a voluntary mass Arab flight from Haifa and across the land.

No wonder, in 1948, Turki didn't consider himself Palestinian: At that time, the word referred to Jewish persons living in their ancient homeland. But Turki is Palestinian now, he says.

As such, Turki lends total sympathy to the Munich terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes, jet hijackers, etc. The violence of what the world calls "'murderers' and 'international outlaws'," he claims, was justified --- a natural result of Palestinian "isolation" and statelessness.

Sure, statelessness accompanies all manner of horrors. Anyone can sympathize, including me.

But statelessness hardly confers a right to take up arms. The stateless Romany people, for example, have never resorted to violence. Nor have many other peoples who want and deserve self-determination.

Indeed, Middle Eastern Jews, since the advent of Islam, were stateless prior to Israel's establishment. They were forced annually to pay onerous taxes in formalized ceremonial demonstrations of Jewish subservience and slavery --- and often went hungry to raise sufficient funds. But they never became violent.

Arabs in Israel hold citizenship, vote and own land and other businesses, assets and property. They obtain free educations and health care, and receive state welfare when in need, at the same per capita levels as poor Jewish Israelis. In fact, by virtue of polygamous marriages, legal in Israel for Muslims, Israeli Arabs often receive more state subsidies than the average poor Jewish family.

Thus Turki's claim that the Jewish people have imposed "apartheid" on Arabs and Muslims is hypocritical and laughably absurd.

Meanwhile, not a single Arab nation allows Jewish citizenship or land-ownership. And the quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority jurisdiction is as supremacist as governments come. It's a criminal offense for anyone to sell land to Jews.

Too bad Turki doesn't address massive abuses of human rights in the Arab and Muslim world before falsely accusing Israel of mistreating attackers, sworn to destroy the state, who fled in fear, attacked Israel and its citizens frequently, yet, threw themselves on the world's mercy as victims and collected billions in U.S. dollar aid, much of it spent to continue attacking "the Zionist entity," in keeping with pledges in the PLO and Hamas charters.

--Alyssa A. Lappen