(CAMERA) A Dec. 27 Washington Post feature by Joel Greenberg on Israel's worst forest fire says, apropos of nothing, that "Jewish National Fund forests, some planted over the ruins of Palestinian villages emptied during Israel's war of independence, became popular picnic and recreation areas." In "Storm Socks East Coast" in the same edition, the Post did not write "flights were grounded at airports from the Carolinas to Boston, land largely emptied of its native American Indian population even before the U.S. War of Independence." The latter would be read instantly as irrelevant editorializing in a news story. What accounts for the former? As for "Palestinian villages," early in the 20th century the term "Palestinian" applied usually to the Jews of that part of the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, it typically meant a Jewish inhabitant of British Mandatory Palestine. Arabs often shunned it as a synonym for Zionist, sometimes describing themselves as residents of greater Syria. And what portion - probably quite small - of JNF forests were planted over war-ruined Arab villages? How many of those villages were relatively new, built by Arabs attracted by Jewish economic development? Most of all, would any of them have been destroyed had not the Arabs rejected the UN's 1947 partition plan and started a war they lost?
2010-12-31 08:39:08Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive