6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard hitting, December 13, 2006
This review is from: The Rape of Palestine and the Struggle for Jerusalem (Paperback)
In this very insightful polemic a number of issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinians conflict are presented in a biased but well argued and informative manner. The central thesis is an examination of how the conflict came to be, a helpful debunking of a variety canards repeated by those who support the Palestinians and hate Israel, and
The illustration of this through careful reasoning and presentation of facts in a new and fascinating way.
Perhaps what is most shocking is not the early history of the conflict, which is mostly a repetition of facts that most are familiar with, but rather the latter portion of the book that examines the `whitewashing of a terrorist', namely Yasser Arafat. Yasser Arafat and his PLO cronies signed a number of agreements with Israel in the early 1990s, beginning with negotiations at the Madrid conference, the Declaration of Principles and the Oslo accords. However this book presents a multi-page list of terrorist attacks by date between 1994 and 1998 and it demonstrates by shoving the names of those killed in the readers face just how much of a sham and foolish policy the `peace process' was that began in that era of idealism.
Other very important examples of terrorism's effect on the state of Israel are presented as well, many of which have been forgotten by today's audience. For instance the story of Hilaron Capucci is presented here, perhaps for one of the first times in a survey study of the conflict and finally his story is analyzed in a proper way. He was a Catholic Archbishop in Israel who was apprehended on the Lebanese border running guns to the PLO. Here the book analyzes how and why Israel choose to make his trial a showcase and how it was that other priests were corrupted by terrorism and thus showing the links between certain hypocritical `priests' and their support for terror.
This book has a variety of messages and it ranges over a variety of topics. Included ad excellent discussions of the Wiezman-Faisal negotiations where King Faisal famously said that he welcomed the return of the Jews to the Holy Land because they were `cousins' of the Arabs. Other negotiations are presented in detail such as the Balfour agreement, the creation of the Mandate and the Abdullah-Zionist negotiations. The topics covered here are wide and this is a big subject. This book serves as a good introduction and it would be well received by anyone who is interested in gaining greater knowledge about the Arab-Israeli conflicts and its multi-faceted nature.
Seth J. Frantzman
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Should be prescribed text book for any study of the Arab-Israeli conflict, October 16, 2007
This review is from: The Rape of Palestine and the Struggle for Jerusalem (Paperback)
For thousands of years the Jews yearned to return to their ancient homeland.
During the 20th century this dream began to become a reality.
The author covers the last 90 years of the history of the Land of Israel and the conflict between the Jews and those who objected to their return, from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which in 1922 became policy of the League of Nations.
The author describes the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem and defines the real boundaries of what has been known as 'Palestine'.
Palestine' according to the original British Mandate consisted of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.
Palestine.
In Biblical times, the author points out that territory was awarded on both sides of the Jordan to the tribe of Menasseh. The tribes of Reuben and Gad were also situated east of the Jordan River. Indeed, historic Palestine contained more land east of the Jordan than on the western side.
The author outlines the Accord between Emir Faisal of Syria and Chaim Weizmann, in which Faisal welcomed the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, stating that it would be to the benefit of both the Jews and the Arabs, and declared that Zionism was nationalistic and not imperialistic and that there was room for an Arab state and a Jewish state in the Levant.
Those who repulsively equate Zionism- the National Liberation Movement of the Jewish people- with imperialism, as the PLO do in their charter, should put this in their pipe and smoke it!
In 1922 Winston Churchill, stripped 77% of historic Palestine, which had been promised as the Jewish National Home by the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations, and awarded it to the Hashemites, thus creating an Arab state.
The author writes that this began the 'rape of Palestine'. From then the land set aside for a Jewish homeland was made smaller and smaller.
The author highlights the remarkable turn around in British policy, in which the British rulers of Palestine did all they could to prevent the re-birth of a Jewish State, including aiding the Arabs in pogroms against the Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936- 1939.
This culminated in the Palestine White Paper of 1939 in which a state for the Jewish people was denied, and Jewish immigration into Palestine prevented.
The author details the anti-Semitism in Whitehall and the British government at the time, and also how the British imported hundreds of thousands of Arabs from the Hauran in Syria, and elsewhere from the Arab world, into Palestine.
Inlcuded here are anti-Semitic quotes by Anthony Eden and Neville Chamberlain, and the testimony by Eden's private secretary that "Eden is immovable on the subject of Palestine. He loves Arabs and hates Jews".
After the Second World War in which 6 million Jews were anihilated, the British helped the Arabs in their campaign of terror against the Jews of Palestine and helped, for example to blow up the Jewish-run Palestine Post.
The author then go's on to document the secret negotiations for peace between Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan, the Six Day war, and the decades long war by Arab terrorists against Israel, mainly targeting women and children.
Most shocking are his revelations about how the world media and international community whitewashed the crimes and hideous utterances of the mass murderer and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.
He quotes Arafat's statements such as his 1970 declarations that "We shall never stop until we go back home and Israel is destroyed". and later that same year "Peace for us means Israel's destructions and nothing else".
After the Oslo Acords of 1993 a cover-up strategy was designed by the Israeli far-left movement Peace Now, in which whitewashing Arafat and the PLO would be the order of the day and blame for the conflict would be shifted to rightwing Israelis.
PLO terror and violent and genocidal statements would be covered up, and Jewish civilians living in Judea and Samaria, Katif and the Golan (half of them children!) would be presented as the bigest impediment to peace in the Middle East.
It is chilling to read of Arafat's orders to execute Jews living in these areas, his orders to murder Arabs who sold land to Jews and his continual engineering of Arab terror against Israel and it's people, while the Oslo process was continuing.
Knowing this, it hardly comes as a surprise that in 2000, Arafat rejected a far reaching and generous peace proposal by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and launched a war of genocide against Israel's people.
The author points out the historic and contemporary centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people, as well as the international plot to disposess the Jews of the City of David.
This book should be the prescribed text book for any study of the Middle East conflict, as it lays bare the plain truth.
Of course most departments in universities around the world that study the Middle East, have their own "Burn Israel" agenda, and will not want you to discover the truths written in this book.
That is why it has to be read!
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