UNRWA

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UNRWA was founded soon after the Middle East war that solidified the legitimacy of the State of Israel (sorry I am not certain either what exactly this war should be called or how to designate it by year). By legitimacy I mean Israel's ability to defend its existence on its own terms by facts on the ground, not "moral legitimacy" or however somebody else might define the term.

It would seem UNRWA was initially mandated to support the needs of everybody impacted by that war, but soon it became an organization specifically for the benefit of Palestinian refugees. The UN addresses the needs of all other e.g. Syrian refugees through UNHCR. This state of affairs probably came about because the UN had just been established and this was the first major refugee situation they faced.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the topic. I intentionally choose Wikipedia in this instance due to its crowd-sourced nature. Any other book or article on this topic is probably going to be biased one way or the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA

I will quote one short paragraph from this article:

So UNHCR's mandate includes integrating refugees into their host country or repatriation, whereas UNRWA is predicated on the understanding that the outcome of the ME war is temporary and their (UNRWA's) charges will eventually return whence they came. I believe the original numbers were 700,000 but now it's over 5 million.

I think it reasonable to suggest that, whether intended or not, the role of the UNRWA has been to perpetuate the ongoing situation in the Middle East by willfully failing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel's victory in the war and informing the world that the global community must consecrate itself to bringing about justice for the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees; and that the world might today be a more peaceful, if not necessarily more just, place had the refugees from this war been dealt with the same as those from any other war.

It aint rocket science.

You simply refer to it as "the 1948 Arab-Israeli War".

Or you could call "the First Arab-Isreali War" , or (for those not in the know) "the First of the Four Arab Israeli Wars".

The "First", or "the 1948" are both commonly used to refer to it.

That was the year it started. Saying it that way distinquishes it from the later three "Arab-Israeli Wars", the one in 1956, the one in 1967, and the last one in 1973.

It was Israel's equivalent of the "American War of Independence".

So yes...that was the war in which Israel was born as a nation-state.

When I researched it earlier, it seemed there was a phase in 1947. I also don't think the term "Arab-Israeli War" is universally accepted, in fact the Wikipedia article I cited calls it the Palestine War, some people call it the Naqba and others call it the Israeli War of Independence. What matters is that afterward, the State of Israeli became a fact to be dealt with, a sovereign nation whether or not that makes one happy.

Your Wiki article is the first time I have ever seen it referred to as "the Palestine War of".

I am old enough to remember the last two of the four "Arab Israeli Wars" being in the news...and thats what they were called in 1967 and in 1973, and how the previous two were referred to back then.

Calling it the "Palestine War" might be taken as biased towards the Palestinians. But at least folks would probably know what you meant...so you could call it that too.

You might be on to something. That the UN blundered by creating an aid organization that unintensionally sanctified Palestinian claim to Israel. But ...I would hafta hold off on saying whether I agree or disagree ...on THAT hot button issue!

Our president at the time of the First Arab-Israeli War was Harry Truman who was suddenly under pressure to "do something" when the fighting broke out. He responded by saying that "Even Jesus Christ wasnt good enough for those people over there. So what does anyone expect me to do about it?".

And right now...it feels like that even a guy who walks on water couldnt straighten out that situation over there.

I'm inclined to think he had the right attitude although I honestly don't know whether his comment was anti-Semitic. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as people definitely spoke differently in those days and references to religion were probably more cultural than ideological.

Actually...yeah. Thats a good question.

My parents marched in the famous 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington.

Yet the first person who told me that story was...my Mom. Expected me to laugh along with it...but I was a bit taken aback by it because of what you said... it seemed to me to be a bit antisemitic. But to Mom's generation I suppose that it was an acceptable quip. So I didnt say anything and smiled along with her. But Ive thought about it many times since. It shows a generational gap between Boomers like me and our parents.

Truman's quip wasnt really bad in and of itself (had a certain pithy truth to it)..but it betrays a certain mindset. And I have learned since that Truman did indeed have a certain genteel anti-semitism typical of Americans of the time. So did FDR.

Dont wanna vilify Truman, but I dont wanna whitewash him either.

What can one say?

You hafta be generous when judging our ancestors...and our grandparents...and even our parents.

Or maybe he can.

Or, more precisely, maybe some of his followers can, if and when enough American Christians start listening to Palestinian Christians and moving away from Christian Zionism, while still acknowledging that Israeli Jews need to be protected somehow too.

Whatever the eventual solution might be, I think it will need to emerge from interfaith dialogue, both in Israel/Palestine and here in the U.S.A.

And I think productive interfaith dialogue will happen only when American Christians are more-or-less evenly split between organized Christian Zionism and organized support for Palestinians.

Only then will the Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, recognize that they can no longer get away with just dismissing and trying to suppress their opposition by claiming it is "anti-semitic." Only then will they begin to recognize that there can be no peace without equality and justice.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 31 Dec 2023, 6:17 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Perhaps this is a factor, but far from the only factor.

Another important factor is that the land of Israel/Palestine is a "holy land" not just to Jews but also to the world's two most popular religions (Christianity and Islam); hence many Palestinians, including both Muslims and Christians, have had a strong sense of collective identity as guardians of their religions' respective holy places. In the case of Christians, many of them also see themselves as descendants of the original followers of Jesus.