Linked here for at least a few days...

Jerry Pournelle received an e-mail with the following "pass it on" type of document attached. Again, Pournelle did not write this first part:

HERE'S THE BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY....Takes just 1.5 minutes to read!!!! It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter. Thank You.



1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be. What will we tell our grandchildren we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference?

START NOW!! Send this to 20 other people you know and ask them to send it to twenty others.



Pournelle's response follows in boldface, and I found it very informative and insightful:

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This reads like a copy of one or another (or a composite) of the advertisements put out by FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East) which run in Commentary and other magazines. As to the truth of the statements, some are true, some are not.

King David certainly did not found Jerusalem. He did make it the capital, and Solomon rebuilt it (although there are professors of archeology who claim that the whole Davidean/Solomonic empire is myth made up in the Babylonian Captivity; Harper's ran a big feature on that recently).

My own view is that the revisionists are trying to get noticed: I don't think there's much real doubt about most of the history in Kings, or even in Judges although some is made larger than life.

The Prophet did not go to Jerusalem as far as history records, although the mosque on Temple Mount has some other claims to being special. Mohamed did apply to the Elders in Jerusalem to have his revelations recorded and have himself listed as a genuine Prophet of the stature of Isaiah, Elijah, and Jesus. He was rejected on several grounds, including that he was only a Son of Abraham, not of Isaac, and therefore not in fact Jewish. Originally in Medina prayers were directed toward Jerusalem, until after that rejection and some time later, when, in the middle of prayer, Mohamed swing around to face Mecca rather than Jerusalem. There is to this day a mosque in Median with "two aspects" one directed at Jerusalem the other at Mecca. After that moment Mecca became the chief city of Islam.

In any event, most of the history is irrelevant: it's certainly the case that from Roman times on that area had few religious Jews, and none loyal to the Temple or the Ethnarchy: the Romans were pretty thorough; see Josephus.

The ethnicity of the population is another story, but after the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora, the local population certainly wasn't Jewish in any nationalist sense. After Constantine most were Christians. Then came the Persians. Arabs. Crusaders. Saracens (Kurds). Mamelukes (Circassians mostly). Turks. A small Jewish population after 1800 or so. And on into modern times.

Whose land is it? Whose land is any land? Certainly millions of Germans were moved after World War II, and for that matter millions of Poles were resettled. Stalin and the later USSR forcibly relocated many Balts to Siberia, often replacing them with ethnic Russians who assumed the names of the people they had displaced as well as taking over their property. Their heirs fight that out in the courts of Latvia and Lithuania to this day. Finns were relocated. Then there is the story of the Native Americans sometimes known as Indians, and the Spanish Conquest, and Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, and California. Etc. Etc. If you want to decide "whose land is it", right of conquest has been recognized for a very long time as the final definition, and if you do not believe that ask any refugee from what used to be known as East Prussia and Silesia. Or is it different when Europeans are displaced?

How far back in history do you want to go? All that area was part of the Roman Empire at one time: does this mean it ought to belong to Italy? After the Prophet it was all swept into Caliphates but to this day Sunni and Shiites fight it out as who who was the real Caliph, and who is the proper successor to the Prophet, and whether the Hidden Imam has appeared, and the rest. Incidentally, repression works pretty well: the Turks so thoroughly dealt with the Old Man Of The Mountain, the original Assassins who intimidated Saladin and Lionheart alike, that what's left of them is a pacifist sect...

History does not tell us "whose land is it?"

On the other hand, one of my Christian friends in Jerusalem can point to the house her father owned. He was a physician, and the house is in the original Israel not far from Jerusalem. They were displaced, and while they have the keys to the house and never sold it or transferred title, they can't visit it. After the foundation of Israel they lived in the Old City until that was taken by Israel, and they were again displaced. As she says, "I know they did terrible things to the Jews in Europe but why did that give them title to my house?"

And of course the west side of the Jordan Valley remains under Israeli control for security reasons: it is a barren minefield now although it was once the most fertile part of the west bank territories. The dirty little secret here is that Jordan isn't very interested in having that returned to the Palestinians, because they don't want a large common border with them. Black September commemorates not an Israeli act but the expulsion of the Palestinians from Jordan by King Hussein: he used his Bedouin guardsmen to drive the Palestinians out, and his son doesn't want them back.

Point 12 is entirely true and is the heart of the matter. The Germans displaced from Silesia and East Prussia have long since vanished into the population and there isn't a lot of irredentist sentiment among their descendents. Since most Arab nations expelled just about all their Jews, and don't welcome any, and Israel was able to absorb them plus refugees from Europe plus emigrants and refuseniks from former USSR, one supposes that the Arab states could have absorbed the refugees. It didn't happen.

But none of this addresses the problem of what to do NOW.

The NOW includes: Israel wants to have cheap labor from the Palestinian areas. The Palestinian areas need the jobs in Israel. Thus the obvious solution to suicide bombings, build walls and stop border crossings, won't work.

The NOW includes: Israel could have made allies of the Christian minority among the Arab/Palestinian population. They chose a path of humiliation (payback for the way Jews were treated in Europe one supposes) and have made the Christian population into, if not enemies, certainly not sympathizers. They have made allies of the Druze. They have made enemies of the Roman and Greek Catholic hierarchies, as well as the Anglicans and Armenians and Methodists in Palestine. They could have allied with the Christians but didn't, and it's too late now I think.

The NOW includes the "settlements" which are enclaves, often deep within what is otherwise Palestinian territory, often in "strategic" locations (i.e. hilltops) but totally indefensible because they can't be supplied; requiring military roads into them, large army patrols, and armed settlers. These are politically a hot potato in Israeli politics, and an obvious irritant to the Palestinians. They can't be defended if left outside the perimeter of a new Jewish State -- and if they are incorporated into a new Israel with a defensible perimeter (connect the dots and build a wall from Settlement to Settlement), tens of thousands of Palestinians must either be expelled or incorporated as non-Jewish Israeli citizens. Neither possibility is palatable to Israel or anyone else. Israeli domestic politics prevents building walls that abandon the settlements. Now what?

The NOW includes the fact that all the Arab states are tyrannies with the exception of Jordan. Some are worse than others, but none are liberal democracies or even Constitutional Monarchies, and with few exceptions none have governments thought legitimate by even a majority of their citizens -- and even where a majority assents, there is a minority that believes its own government to be a tyranny. With WHOM does one make a deal when dealing with the Arab world? Governments that can fall overnight? NOW look at Palestine which has no real government at all. If Arafat wanted to bring peace -- it is not clear what he wants, but assume the best will in the world -- he has not enough control over his populace. Iraq and Syria and even Saudi Arabia will pay large sums to the relicts of suicide bombers -- Iraq openly to encourage recruitment of them, the others more quietly as charity pensions to those killed by the Israelis.

The NOW includes some fairly ham handed actions by the Israelis, such as shooting the half-witted Sexton of the Church of the Holy Nativity as he walked across Manger Square thinking he was going to work. I met the man when I was there years ago. He was simple, but honest, hard working, and friendly, and didn't want charity although would accept tips for actually doing something for you like watching your brief case while you went into the Grotto. So he was shot down like a dog in the street and no ambulance was allowed to go to him, and he died, and I suppose the dogs licked his blood in the streets. If there has been any expression of sympathy from the Israeli government I have not heard it. There are other such incidents. And of course that isn't the same as strapping on explosives and heading for a Seder to blow up people at a family gathering. But then the simple Sexton didn't do that and never would.

So: many of the points made above are true; but it's not the complete story. And brooding about the past isn't likely to solve the problem.

Here are my thoughts on the subject. They are subjective, and I don't pretend omniscience:

Clearly the only way out is to negotiate a border, build a wall, and expel everyone of the wrong ethnicity from either side of it: ethnic cleansing. Switzerland did that in 1875 or so (it was religious in that case; the ethnicity wasn't relevant nor was language). Russia and Poland did that in 1945-50. The cost of paying decent compensation is low compared to continued warfare. Some of the Settlements will have to go, as will many enclaves of Palestinians inside what will become Israel.

There won't be any "right of return". Israel can't accept that because it would shortly after have one man one vote once and become just another Middle Eastern tyranny. There was no "right of return" for Jews expelled from most Arab nations after the formation of Israel. There comes a time when people simply have to accept the outcome of an armed contest and get on with their lives. Poles and Germans managed. I could list many other places.

Where the border will be is likely to be settled unilaterally: the Israelis have the military power to set it wherever they want to. No one else has the power to keep them from doing it. Leave it to them and get out of the way.

But until the fight has gone on long enough for all sides to see there is no alternative but the Cyprus Solution, it will continue, and US meddling in the area will do no good, and can do a lot of harm. Moreover, if we offer to pay for the cost of resettlement there will be a LOT more people to resettle.

And that's about all I have to say on this for a while.