(Jerusalem Post) Allon Hachmon - An old anti-Zionist argument, recently reasserted, holds that Zionism required that the Arabs in the land had to be driven out to make room for the new settlers. I knew that this thesis was deeply flawed from my personal observations. In 1935, as the Nazi influence grew, my family escaped from Germany and joined other families to form a new settlement in Palestine in 1936. They named it Kfar Shmaryahu (next to Herzliya). The families cleared the rocks, drilled a well and paved a road before erecting a bunch of modest homes and farming the land. All this was done on previously unoccupied land - land that was lying fallow next to an Arab village called Sidna Ali. The people of Sidna Ali left in 1948 but were not driven out by any Israeli forces. In 1936, my parents and others saw large parts of the land that were lying fallow, uncultivated, and not settled; they believed that there was no reason why they could not share the land with the Arabs, and they did hope that Jews and Arabs could all live in peace together. The writer is a professor of international relations at George Washington University.
2014-03-25 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive