Dear Ran, No, I won't erase your letter. I'll respond to it though. I don't understand what you mean by saying that I 'bring this album to the front' - front of what? I posted it, and left it. That's it. Many people have looked at it and have emailed me that they liked it. You are only the second person to criticize it. You are sadly misinformed, not that that is your fault given all the propaganda. The idea that Palestinians came to an 'empty land' from Saudi Arabia or Jordan or somewhere comes from a now thoroughly discredited book called "From Time Immemorial." Unfortunately many people believe this book, not knowing any better. Israeli historians like Benny Morris have now exploded the myth that Palestine was 'empty' when Zionists arrived. Comments made by early Zionists make this clear. David Ben-Gurion, in "The rights of the Jews and others in Palestine" (pub. 1918) said: "Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants." Yitzhak Epstein said at the Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1905: "We have FORGOTTEN one small matter: There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it. . . ." In "The Iron Wall" By Avi Shlaim there is a quote from a Zionist delegation sent to the Holy Land after the 1897 Zionist Congress to explore the feasibility of settling European Jews there. Their reply was a telegram: "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." So much for the idea of an empty land. It seemed logical after WW II that Jews, so cruelly treated in the Holocaust, should have a country of their own. I would have suggested perhaps Bavaria, for after all it was the Germans who tried to wipe out the Jews. Why should the Palestinians have lost their country because of what the Germans did? And now in the 21st century, it seems very 19th-century to want a country to be all one ethnic group; there's no need for that. As for the Palestinians being 'Arabs' who could just as well live in some other Arab country, all 'Arab' countries are different, with different ethnic groups and different cultures. The ancestors of the great majority of Palestinians have lived in the Holy Land as long as the Jews have, or longer. They are descended from all the peoples who have ever lived in the place, including Jews, and Jews are only one of the many groups who have lived there. True, Arabs invaded the area in the 7th century, but they were not many and were stretched thin, spreading themselves over a vast area from southern Asia to Spain. They brought their language and their religion to each land and intermarried with the inhabitants. There is little similarity between Egyptians and Iraqis, Moroccans and Lebanese. They don't look the same; they don't speak the same language ('Standard Arabic' is taught in schools to bridge the language gap). Those who trace their names to the Arab tribes have Arab ancestry, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't also descended from the other peoples in an area. Therefore people known as 'Arabs' don't necessarily have all or even most of their ancestry from the Arabian peninsula. (And people known as 'Jews' don't necessarily have all or even most of their ancestry from the Holy Land either.) Though I know Israelis often use the term 'Arab' to imply that Palestinians are foreigners, they are at least as indigenous to the Holy Land as the Jews. There are many Christian Palestinians, and most Muslim Palestinians are at least partly descended from Christians. Who were those first Christians? Mostly converted Jews. Palestinians and Jewish Israelis are close cousins. It is a tragedy that they are now enemies. The International Solidarity Movement, which is completely nonviolent, stands for a just peace in the Holy Land. It takes no position on whether that peace will be achieved by having two separate states or one integrated state where all are equal. That's up to the Palestinians and the Israelis. Khaaleda@aol.com

said khaaleda 2005.09.17 at 19:22:16 PDT