Sally Prag
2 min readDec 7, 2023

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Actually, your explanation of how the Jewish people acquired their homeland is misleading. They didn’t remove 750,000 Palestinians so they could have a homeland. They were given a homeland that consisted of Jewish-owned land (some of whom had been there for hundreds of years) and then all the poorest land that was uninhabited, such as the desert and the malaria-ridden swampland. But the Arabs (the Jews were the ones referred to as Palestinians and those of Arabian origin were Arabs) would not accept the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Jews were attacked by all of the surrounding Arab nations, with the one intention to get rid of them once and for all. The Jews turned out to have the strongest army and fought the Arabs back. In addition, the Jews had to pass by Arab villages to travel between the fragmented pieces of Jewish land from the 1947 agreement. Because the Arabs hadn’t agreed, they attacked and killed Jews as they attempted to travel between their own lands, and eventually the Jews decided they had to do something about it, which was to remove these Arab villages and claim the land for their protection. It’s kind of hard to argue with that.
Yes they did also remove entire Arab villages in a brutal manner and that is inexcusable. But the way you described it made it sound as if they made their home entirely from stolen land, and that’s far from the truth.
Also, a little mentioned fact - around a third of the Arab population of Palestine in 1947 were not people who “had lived there for generations” but had arrived since the first aliyah. Arabs wanted to populate the land to stop the Jews from claiming it and vast numbers arrived from the surrounding countries. Another little mentioned fact - most of the infrastructure in Palestine pre-1947 was constructed and funded by Egyptians - Egyptian Jews to be specific. Another little mentioned fact - the largest influx of Jews into Israel after 1948 came from Arab countries where there were large Jewish populations who were treated as second class citizens there and then beaten, raped and humiliated for being Jews once war broke out between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. There were major crimes against Jews throughout the Arab world in those years and prior.
And that leads me to your point about Black Americans. Yes Jews have known the very same level of existential threat for a long time. I don’t say this to justify their treatment of the Palestinians today. Black Americans should be given a homeland - if they want one. But I suspect even acquiring their own homeland would not come without its ongoing irresolvable problems, like Israel has found. And I only say “irresolvable” because everyone has to want a solution that serves everyone’s needs, and that hasn’t happened nor does it seem to be possible in the near future.

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Sally Prag
Sally Prag

Written by Sally Prag

I write creative nonfiction essays and poetry. Rethinking life through my words. Sometimes too seriously, sometimes not seriously enough.

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