Long overdue: cutting funding for UNRWA
This is a good move:
The Trump administration announced Friday it is cutting nearly $300 million in planned funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, and that it would no longer fund the agency after decades of support. Instead, it said it would seek other channels by which to aid the Palestinians.
The administration castigated the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for failed practices, and indicated that it rejected the criteria by which UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees, whereby the UN agency confers refugee status not only on original refugees but on their millions of descendants…
… something not granted by the UN to refugees from any other places…
The US will now work together with other international groups to find a better model to assist the Palestinians, the statement said…
“Israel supports the move because UNWRA is one of the main problems perpetuating the conflict,” Hadashot news quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office as saying on Friday evening.
The article goes on to say that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany are going to take up the slack to support UNRWA financially. What are they supporting? A group that advocates and trains children in this sort of thing [hat tip: Legal Insurrection]:
It’s always amazed me that while the so called “Palestinian” refugees have sat in camps for a couple of generations now, none of the surrounding Arab/Muslim countries have made any efforts at all to take their fellow Arabs/Muslim in and resettle them in their own countries. Nor, according to reports, have these countries–some of them fabulously wealthy–made any real contributions for the maintenance–food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care, etc.–of those camps and those supposed “refugees.”
Instead, all this time, it has apparently been the U.S., through our annual UN dues and, in addition, other separate annual donations specifically for UNRWA, that has paid the majority of the bill.
Enough!
There were during the period running from 1944 to 1968 far larger refugee flows than the Arab departure from the area inside the 1949 armistice lines (German populations in Bohemia, the Sudetenland, Silesia, Pomerania, and Prussia, for starters; Poles from east of the Curzon line; Jews from all over the Arab world) There were also smaller flows which were contextually more significant (Greek Cypriots in 1974). These were all sorted in a matter of years through resettlement in congenial territory, separating belligerent or alienated populations. In re the Arabs, UNRWA was erected to maintain it’s clientele on a permanent dole, the definition of ‘refugee’ was expanded to include anyone who had been resident in the former mandatory Palestine earlier than 14 May 1946, and it was expanded again to include any descendant of a person so defined. In effect, they created a monster, and by continually sustaining that population, they relieved them of much of the inclination ordinary people have of taking stock of their situation and optimizing. You look at election results and poll results and the behavior of the political class on the West Bank and Gaza and you see people whose general disposition to think as if they were in a position to dictate terms to their enemy. They’re not and they never have been. The Dr. Phil question, “How’s that workin’ out for you” has been robbed of its urgency by UNRWA. The West Bank and Gaza are run by grisly mafias. People like Jeremy Corbin and Philip Giraldi behave as if it’s Israel’s fault.
Snow on Pine,
I lived for some time in the Middle East. The Palestinians are generally reviled by most other Arab nationalities as being dishonorable cheats, scoundrels, and liars. The other Arab nations will support the Palestinians as a counterweight to Israel’s economic clout in the region, but they do not like or trust them.
The Arabs had a large hand in creating the Palestinian refugee crisis. When the first Palestinian refugee camps were established, the neighbouring countries took the opportunity to empty their prisons and mental hospitals into the camps. This is how the “Palestinian” population grew from a few hundred thousand to several millions in few decades.
Jordan and Lebanon learned what happens when you take in Palestinian refugees. See this and this.
About 1/2 of Jordan’s population consists of people who left the old Mandate territories in 1948 or in 1967. About 1/3 consists of the old Transjordanian population. The remainder are migrants from various parts of the Arab world. As Arab countries go, Jordan’s not doing badly. However, the political organizations derived from the old Mandate population had to be stomped good and hard twice – first in 1957 and then in 1970. The development and maintenance of parliamentary institutions in Jordan was as a consequence truncated.
As for Lebanon, the UNRWA camp dwellers were a problem, but the downward slide started in 1967 when the other states dumped PLO militiamen on Lebanon. The confessional make up of the place made careful negotiation between political bosses the sine qua non of local politics. The PLO brigands proved horribly disruptive.
Not to worry. The “international community,” will support them as long as they keep killing Jews.
The Arabs are starting to ally themselves with Israel. Most of this is the Iran threat and it will be interesting to see if this survives the collapse of Iran which might come in the next two years.
Roy Nathanson on September 1, 2018 at 12:40 pm at 12:40 pm said:
…
The Arabs had a large hand in creating the Palestinian refugee crisis. When the first Palestinian refugee camps were established, the neighbouring countries took the opportunity to empty their prisons and mental hospitals into the camps. This is how the “Palestinian” population grew from a few hundred thousand to several millions in few decades.
* * *
Sounds like Cuba and the boats to Havana (I’m sure the USSR included a few undesirables in its occasional outflows as well). Do you have any links for this, as I have not heard it mentioned in my reading heretofore?
I think the funding should have been cut years (decades) ago; certainly after the Palestinians started pensioning “martyrs” and their terrorist-enabling families.
Money is fungible, so all UN, US, and even Israeli aid facilitated that obscenity.
PS Israel is so far as I know the only country which has been “required” by the international community to materially aid & support their sworn enemies.
Over the years I saw very little reporting to alert us taxpayers to the fact that it was the U.S. that was actually paying the lion’s share of the costs to maintain these “Palestinian” refugee camps, apparently in perpetuity; it was all kept very quiet.
One article, several years ago, that apparently slipped through the filters of the MSM that I did take note of, reported that the U.S. was also paying for the salaries of the UN “teachers” in the refugee camps, and that when an examination was made of the credentials and associations of said teachers, a lot of them were found to have ties to various terrorist groups.
Now what do you think these “teachers” might have been teaching the kids who they were teaching?
Roy Nathanson, above at 12:40 PM: “The Palestinians are generally reviled by most other Arab nationalities as being dishonorable cheats, scoundrels, and liars.”
That attitude is not a new one either. Almost fifty years ago (in December of 1968 to be exact) my family spent a few days touring Lebanon (back when that was a safe and enjoyable thing for Americans to do). One incident that has stuck in my mind from that experience happened as we were being driven around the countryside by an English-speaking Lebanese guide. We were admiring the lovely country (rather like coastal California) and the neat, prosperous-looking villages. Then we came over the crest of a hill and saw, off to one side of the road, an ugly, chaotic huddle of shacks on bare, litter strewn dirt.
My mother asked: “What is that?!. A dump or something?”
Our guide answered in tones that fairly dripped with disdain: “That, madam? That is the Palestinians.”
One should never build a theory on a single data point but that guide’s contemptuous comment always came to mind when I heard “Arab spokesmen” ranting about “…solidarity with our Palestinian brothers…”.
A little-known and historically interesting fact:
One group – and only one, that I know of – has tried to help Palestinian refugees in a real sense, by building housing to replace refugee camps, building roads and hospitals and universities, etc.
Yup, you guessed it — the Israelis.
The attempts to build modern towns instead of refugee camps were halted… by the UN. It was claimed that this was prejudicing a final settlement of the issue, and therefore must stop.
The universities, e.g. Bir Zeit, remained, and became hotbeds of terrorist recruitment. Israel occasionally tried to shut them for that reason, resulting in a public outcry: “but they’re universities!”
In all the modern history of the Palestinians, it seems they have never missed an opportunity to defecate in their own nests. Prior to the first Gulf War, a lot of Palestinians had migrated to Kuwait. They tended to occupy a lot of the mid-level management and supervisory positions there. Although they were not allowed to become citizens, they had a pretty good gig going. But, when Iraq invaded, the Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein, collaborated with the invaders, and acted as informants against the Resistance. After the war, all Palestinians there were quietly rounded up and deported.
As Neo pointed out the GERMANS will help pay to support the Palestinians. They are doing this instead of paying for their own national defense. Which we chump Americans are doing.
This, of course, is a twofer for the Nazis.
Oh, pardon me, I meant the GERMANS. They get to say eff-you to us Amercans AND get to continue their beloved national socialist sport of murdering Jewish people.
Where the ‘Palestinians‘ are concerned my give a damn was busted decades ago. If I was a citizen of Israel I would want my government to remove all arabs from the West Bank, incorporate the territory as a part of Israel, and let cerain countries know their capitals are on the doomsday list.
Daniel Schwartz on September 1, 2018 at 6:26 pm at 6:26 pm said:
A little-known and historically interesting fact:
* * *
I didn’t know that, but had heard something about this, although the reports I read always called them “Israeli greenhouses” without the note that Americans bought them for the Palestinians.
They should have had all their aid cut off the next day.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9331863/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/looters-strip-gaza-greenhouses/
Greenhouse
Emilio Morenatti / AP
updated 9/13/2005 10:25:07 PM ET Print Font:
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip — Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses on Tuesday, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.
American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash.
Palestinian police stood by helplessly Tuesday as looters carted off materials from greenhouses in several settlements, and commanders complained they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized assets. In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.
AesopFan–Beat me to it.
There was a very illustrative story reported by several news outlets in 2005, about the 4,000 functioning greenhouses that Jewish settlers had built and run, and that the Israelis left for the Palestinians when they withdrew from the Golan heights—as a gesture of goodwill. This as a concrete way to both boost the Palestinian’s economy, and to give them increased access to more of the fresh fruits and vegetables they had complained were in short supply.
According to reports, at the time they were turned over to the Palestinians, these greenhouses were producing profits of $100 million a year from domestic sales in Israel, plus the export of some of the tomatoes, flowers, and fruit these greenhouses produced.
According to reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to buy the greenhouses from the settlers, or to let the Israeli or the U.S. governments pay for them. So, wealthy U.S. Jewish donors raised $14 million dollars to buy 3,000 of the greenhouses for the Palestinians.
Said these accounts, as soon as the Israeli’s withdrew, Palestinians arrived and started looting and destroying anything they could get their hands on—including the greenhouses—while the PA policemen looked on and did nothing (some policemen were reported to have joined in the looting). One PA policemen was quoted as telling NBC News that they couldn’t stop the looting, and that the Palestinians were ‘like locusts.”
Reports say the Palestinians stole the irrigation pumps, they stole the hoses, they stole plastic sheeting, etc.
And so some 800 or more of the greenhouses were immediately rendered “inoperative.”
I wonder if any of those 4,000 greenhouses still stand today, and if any for them are producing their former flowers, tomatoes, and fruit?
Snow – the agenda presented (peace) is never the real agenda (power).
Here’s another article about aid.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12918/us-aid-palestinians
“It is clear that the Palestinian boycott of the US administration did not include receiving funds from the Americans.
The Palestinians are entitled to voice their anger at the US. However, if they are so fed up with the US that they are even boycotting US administration officials, why are they demanding that the Americans continue to supply them with hundreds of millions of dollars each year?
The Palestinians are trying to blackmail the US by claiming, absurdly, that the recent US decisions jeopardize the two-state solution and prospects for peace in the Middle East. These are the very Palestinians, however, who have refused to resume peace talks with Israel for the past four years, since long before Trump was elected as president.”
This is the author’s credit line: Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
Sometimes he has been called a “scholar” on his by-line, but I can’t find any biography on the web, not even on Gatestone under that tab, so this may be a pseudonym or .. something. However, his article in this case seems to jibe with reality.
But, when Iraq invaded, the Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein, collaborated with the invaders, and acted as informants against the Resistance. After the war, all Palestinians there were quietly rounded up and deported.
You’re confusing the population who were resident in Kuwait with the population resident in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan. It was the latter who were Saddam cheerleaders, not the former
If they are not familiar with it already, people might want to take a look at the videos and the translations into English, from all sorts of “official” Middle Eastern sources, that MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, has on their website at memri.org.
Here you can find English translations of the texts of some of the sermons preached at prominent Mosques, government produced propaganda and TV broadcasts, government produced textbooks used by students, government produced statements and position papers, etc.
Unfiltered, primary documents and information that you will not find elsewhere, nor will you likely see it reported by the MSN.
Take a look, for instance, at the Hamas-produced Sesame Street type TV shows that are aimed at children in the Middle East, and especially Palestinian children, where colorful cartoon characters teach Palestinian children to hate. Or the current year textbooks that preach Jihad and martyrdom.
It certainly is eye opening, and gives you an inkling of what the Israelis and we have to deal with in the area.
Responding to Art Deco on September 2, 2018 at 7:46 am:
I am not at all confusing them. I was in Kuwait immediately after the war. I heard the stories of Palestinian collaboration directly from Kuwaitis who lost family members who were in the Resistance due to Palestinian neighbors ratting them out.
The Iraqi’s favorite method of killing Kuwaiti women who spied for the Allies was to insert a glass bottle in their vagina and uterus and then kick their belly until the bottle broke. It would take them many long hours to die from internal bleeding.
As a result of this collaboration, it was an unannounced policy of the Kuwaiti government to deport all Palestinians. This was accomplished quietly over a period of about three months. Some of the deportations became voluntary as many chose to leave in a more orderly fashion taking their possessions with them. Also, people stopped doing business with them when it became understood that they were not going to be there much longer.
Oh, and I also spoke directly with Palestinians who were still there facing imminent deportation. They were bitter about their circumstances yet unrepentant in their support of Saddam Hussein.
Sorry, Roy. Not buying.
Well, I have no links to send you. This is information I acquired first hand, from May of 1991 through October of 1991, while I was there rebuilding damaged schools. If you want to call me a liar, I suppose you can. But what motivation would I have to lie?
Was there some support for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait among the Palestinians in Kuwait? Some say there was. It is true that the palestineans supported Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War I?
Who Needs to Apologize, the Palestinians or the Kuwaitis?
According to these anecdotes, there was at least some support for Saddam among the Palestinians living in Kuwait.
Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar, who had her 15 minutes of fame when her insulting tweets- some about the deceased Barbara Bush- became viral, apparently was among the Palestinians who got expelled from Kuwait after Saddam lost Gulf War I. She was then a child.
My parents got some Christmas cards in the ’80s from a Palestinian living in Kuwait with his adult children.
Yes. Along with some Jordanians (although many Jordanians are actually Palestinians with Jordanian citizenships) and Yemenis. The reason they supported Saddam Hussien was because they believed that Saddam would turn Kuwait into a Palestinian province for them to live in. The disgusting thing is that many of those Palestinians who supported Iraq were Kuwaiti citizens.
Gringo, the Kuwaiti government naturalized about 6,000 Bedouin en bloc around about 1966. Otherwise, between 1949 and 1990, the annual number of naturalizations averaged a few score. (IIRC, the winners of that lottery were generally spouses of native-born Kuwaitis). The number of people drawn from the West Bank and Gaza who later received Kuwaiti citizenship would have been fewer than 2,000 in a country which had 2 million residents in 1990. The government has been very resistant to granting citizenship to anyone whose pedigree in the country does not extend back to 1920. All of the Gulf emirates follow similar policies.
This is because her neighbors, who were Palestinian Kuwaitis and they all were friends and usually invited each other over for lunch, told her one day during lunch “We can’t wait for Saddam to get this annexation over with and hopefully he’ll give us your house”
Pro-tip: if you want to persuade someone with an anecdote, try a story that isn’t nonsensical.
If you want to call me a liar, I suppose you can. But what motivation would I have to lie?
People who offer unverifiable biographical tidbits as support for an argument I tend to ignore. (Especially when they fit just precisely). I don’t know what your motivations are and I don’t care.
Pro-tip: if you want to persuade someone with an anecdote, try a story that isn’t nonsensical.
From my adolescent years onward I knew a family of Palestinian Christian origin- high achievers. Some of them at times expressed opinions that, to me at least, were nonsensical- and that even among those who had resided in the US for decades. Arafat’s support of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait also seemed to me to be nonsensical. My point, in reply to you, is just because it seems nonsensical to you doesn’t necessarily mean it was never said.
If you wish to believe that there was minimal to no support of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait among Palestinians residing at the time in Kuwait, go right ahead. My gut says otherwise. Why wold they hold opinions all that different from their compatriots in the West Bank or Gaza?
Gringo, you’re telling me someone is eating lunch with a neighbor they’ve known for years and tells them rah rah cannot wait until Saddam hands me your house. Again, the story is nonsensical.
Art Deco: “Again, the story is nonsensical.”
Gringo, Again: “My point, in reply to you, is just because it seems nonsensical to you doesn’t necessarily mean it was never said.”
End of conversation.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2005/09/15/palestinians-more-things-change-more/
Art Deco now has three separate sources of anecdotal evidence and two links to articles indicating that Palestinians in Kuwait supported Saddam Hussein, collaborated with the Iraqi invaders, and were expelled from Kuwait after the war as a result.
If he still doesn’t want to believe it, I doubt that any additional evidence would convince him.
Having said that about the Palestinians, I would note that the Kuwaitis are a hard bunch to love. Generations of inherited wealth and privilege have made them extremely arrogant and pretentious. As places in the world go, Kuwait was one of my least favorite.
People get the government the deserve. The “Palestinians” are governed my an organized crime syndicate.
http://manningthewall.com/trump-haters-give-me-something-better/
To paraphrase Pamela Geller: When given the choice between a civilized society and a savage, choose the civilized society.
Phil Christianson,
Agreed about the Palestinian government being a crime syndicate. In a recent interview with Marco Rubio, in which he was responding to a question about Venezuela, he made a point that the broad dividing line in the world today is not ideological but between Democratic and Authoritarian governments. The Authoritarian governments include Russia, Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. These countries all make common cause and support each other in evading sanctions and in the UN and other world organizations. They very often maintain a democratic facade, but turn the very institutions of democracy into a sham. While they are all very different, they are all dedicated to remaining in power at any cost and engage in state sanctioned corruption and crime at levels never before seen.
The Palestinian Authority is such a “government” and being a member of the club, they receive unconditional political support from the rest. Any action designed to weaken the real democracies of the world (whom they see as their natural enemies) is welcomed and supported by the rest. Even terrorism is supported or at least excused.
It is time that we stop being blinded by the false claims of many of these governments that they are motivated by ideology or theology. They are mostly about pure thuggery.
Gringo, Again: “My point, in reply to you, is just because it seems nonsensical to you doesn’t necessarily mean it was never said.”
No, it means it is not credible. End of conversation.
Art Deco now has three separate sources of anecdotal evidence
Art Deco also read contemporary news reports which said that 1/2 the population of stateless Arabs and Jordanian citizens left Kuwait between August 1990 and January 1991 and the remainder were expelled in March 1991. You have 400,000 people, you are going to have a variety of reactions to exigent circumstances. You’re telling me (1) that you worked there and (2) that masses of perfect strangers due to be deported within weeks were confiding to you in English. Meanwhile, Gringo’s telling me that X, who has been on friendly terms with Y for years is, at Y’s lunch table, taunting him and rubbing his nose in it. The two of you are too disoriented to notice that you are wearing cologne marketed as Eau de Yarnpuller.
To paraphrase Pamela Geller: When given the choice between a civilized society and a savage, choose the civilized society.
True enough. I’m not sure Geller or Robert Spencer acknowledge that absent a breakdown in political authority (and you do see that again and again), Arab societies and those adjacent are usually fairly tranquil. Jonathan Turley is one for whinging about the rubrics of the common life in Saudi Arabia and also about Saudi jurisprudence. What he never acknowledges is that in a country with nearly 30 million people resident therein, there are perhaps 250 homicides a year and that the number of homicides exceeds the number of executions. The United Arab Emirates sees a mean of about 1 execution per year. There’s plenty of ‘civilization’ in the Arab world and points adjacent, even if their political cultures are suffused with revanchism and conspiratorialism.
Art Deco:
Do you really think that people who have been neighbors don’t sometimes harbor secret venom, to be unleashed when the political winds blow in a certain direction?
If so, I fear you are somewhat naive.
It’s happened time and again. On occasion, previously-friendly groups of neighbors have even massacred previously-friendly groups of neighbors, and confiscation of territory is not at all unusual.
The examples are really quite numerous.
Art Deco has troubling views. Which in his last comment include “Arab societies and those adjacent are usually fairly tranquil.”
Totalitarian societies tend to be “tranquil” because any breach of the rules (See the old USSR and Maoist China) is severely punished, like the Muslim justice of amputating a hand for petty theft. Or executing homosexuals for their “private” perversions.
On the other hand, ethnic cleansing and its equivalents, like executing homosexuals, does “sanitize” a population. In the US, we are seeing the sanitization of Constitutionalists from society, now called fascists, and the Federalist Society becoming a filthy name to our esteemed diversity- loving Leftists.
ArtDeco: So, you do believe that the Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait during the time frame I mentioned, but you don’t believe that I was capable of learning that fact independently while living there. Do I have that right?
Art Deco
The only evidence you have presented to support your conjecture is to point out that half of the Palestinians residing in KuwaIt left after Saddam invaded Kuwait and before Gulf War I commenced. It is not likely that those who left supported Saddam’s invasion. You have presented no evidence whatsoever regarding the beliefs of those Palestinians who remained in Kuwait until the commencement of Gulf War I.
Regarding your implicit claim that Palis living outside of West Bank and Gaza do not or did not swallow the PA/PLO/Hamas/Arafat/Abbas Kool-Aid, my reply is that it is not difficult to find statements from those of Palestinian origin who have lived decades in the US that are just as batshit crazy as those who have lived their entire lives in West Bank or Gaza. Granted, this doesn’t mean that all those of Palestinian origin who have spent decades in the US hold some batshit crazy opinions,but there are enough who do.
Neo to Art Deco:
Ray Nathanson:
Do the math. Putting those two statements together, I find it rather plausible that SOME Palestinians residing in Kuwait saw Saddam’s invasion as the Kuwaitis getting their comeuppance.
Art Deco to Ray Nathanson on September 3, 2018 at 12:32 pm:
That is NOT what he reported. You need to read more carefully. You imply that Palestinians were confiding to him, whereas he reported that he got those reports from Kuwaitis.
Ray Nathanson on September 2, 2018 at 11:30 am:
Apparently Art Deco is “too disoriented” to accurately note precisely from whom Ray Nathanson was getting his information. “Eau de Yarnpuller,” indeed!
Not sure what Gringo fancies is the semantic content of this statement
“Oh, and I also spoke directly with Palestinians who were still there facing imminent deportation. They were bitter about their circumstances yet unrepentant in their support of Saddam Hussein.”
That aside, there were 400,000 stateless and Jordanian Arabs in Kuwait prior to August 1990. Fully half left prior to January 1991. Are these ‘collaborators’? How many people remaining in Kuwait did something nefarious that they weren’t coerced into doing? Some things might make prudent social policy. Doesn’t make people subject to such bloc measures personally at fault.
You have presented no evidence whatsoever regarding the beliefs of those Palestinians who remained in Kuwait until the commencement of Gulf War I.
So what? I’m not the one making affirmative contentions. You were, but the contentions you made were nutty and the contentions he made were … convenient.
I’m going to begin with an understanding of how people behave under ordinary circumstances and how they process shocks to those circumstances. The admiration for Saddam in Jordan and on the West Bank and in Gaza was disgusting but also characteristic of stupid people without any skin in the game. In Kuwait, you had people living a good life who saw that life subject to gruesome disruption in the service of one man’s megalomania. Well, a certain number of people are so status-obsessed or so enamored of rough trade that they’ll fall in line. Others co-operate for reasons which are crass. Then you’ve got the broad mass of humanity, who keep their head down and hope for the best.
Art Deco,
And so we come full circle, and you now agree with all of the facts I provided, except that you think the Palestinians collaborating with the Iraqi invaders and betraying the country that hosted them was somehow justified.
Would it have been so difficult to simply express your sympathies for the Palestinians at the very beginning?
My mistake. Art Deco stated that Roy Nathanson had reported on conversations with Palestinians. I replied that he had reported on conversations with Kuwaitis, not on conversations with Palestinians. The facts are that Roy Nathanson reported on conversations with both Kuwaitis and Palestinians.
Art Deco:
While Ray Nathanson did comment that Kuwaitis had told him of Palestinian collaboration with Saddam, he did also report conversations with Palestinians.
Roy Nathanson on September 2, 2018 at 11:37said:
While Art Deco finds such candid statements implausible, I find it plausible that those who oppose an autocratic government would express their opinions to an American. At this stage, Palestinians facing deportation did not have a kind view of the Kuwaiti government.When I was working in Argentina when the military ran the government, on a number of occasions perfect strangers- who could identify me as a foreigner by my relatively informal wardrobe- came up to me to denounce the military government.
So, I do find it plausible that Palestinians would have spoken candidly to Roy Nathanson. After all, Palestinians would still have been deported regardless of what they said to him. At this stage all Palestinians, regardless of their stances during the invasion, would have been deported. Was it unfair that among those Palestinians who were deported were those who had not supported Saddam’s invasion? Yes.
It is also plausible that both Kuwaitis and Palestinians told Roy Nathanson similar stories.
Gringo,
Correct on all counts. I had extensive conversations with both Kuwaitis and Palestinians. I have often found that opposing parties in a conflict will speak much more freely with me, as third party foreigner, than they would in public. In particular, many people specifically want Americans to hear and understand their points of view. In this case, the basic facts of what I learned from both parties were in agreement, albeit from conflicting viewpoints.
And so we come full circle, and you now agree with all of the facts I provided, except that you think the Palestinians collaborating with the Iraqi invaders and betraying the country that hosted them was somehow justified.
I didn’t pay any attention to the personal anecdotes you provided (much less agree with them) nor did I even suggest that it would have been ‘justified’ for anyone to have collaborated with the Iraqi military &c It’s not difficult to read what I did say and interpret it correctly, but that’s not what you’re on about today. You were indignant when I said I didn’t buy what you were saying, now you’re playing scuzzy little forensic games.
Ray Nathanson:
That was also my experience. I was working on a rig in the Guatemalan jungle in an area -Alta Verapaz- with active conflict. Guerrillas had briefly taken over a rig some 25 Km from the rig where I worked. After I left Guatemala, the home office in Houston sent out a very reassuring memo: “Due to mortar fire at the airstrip for the rigs, rig per diem may be increased $10/day.”
My experience was that in a group, rig workers would clam up regarding expressing any political opinions, for fear of any orejas, a.k.a. informants, in the group. Alone with me, they were more candid. There was no love for the generals: they were thieves who had taken possession of large plots of land in the area for themselves. I later read in NACLA of confirmation of the military land grabs. At the same time, the rig workers had no love for the guerrillas- they just wanted to be left alone.
ArtDeco,
You’re absolutely right that I was and am indignant at being called a liar. Still waiting for your apology…
Gringo,
Sounds like we have had similar experiences. I tire of people who think that “read that” trumps “been there, done that”.
Art Deco:
I discourage personal attacks among commenters, especially when the point is made and then made again and again.
It’s certainly perfectly okay to say that you don’t believe a certain anecdote, or that you think it’s atypical or non-representative of the general run of things.
But I don’t know why you keep beating this particular horse, which amounts to calling people liars. Again, it’s okay to say you disagree and don’t believe them, but once or twice is more than enough, especially in the absence of any evidence that they are not telling the truth.
I discourage personal attacks among commenters, especially when the point is made and then made again and again.
I’ve returned to the subject because two people have repeatedly posted replies to me.
It’s certainly perfectly okay to say that you don’t believe a certain anecdote, or that you think it’s atypical or non-representative of the general run of things.
That’s precisely what I did. Mr. Nathanson has been most indignant about that.
But I don’t know why you keep beating this particular horse, which amounts to calling people liars. Again, it’s okay to say you disagree and don’t believe them, but once or twice is more than enough, especially in the absence of any evidence that they are not telling the truth.
I’ve presented my argument above derived from contemporary newspaper accounts and common sense.
Very simple question to answer: It took Google 0.73 seconds to find 976,000 articles on the Kuwaiti expulsion of the Palestinians Here are a couple of the most interesting ones from the first page:
http://www.gulfwar1991.com/Gulf%20War%20Complete/Chapter%2010,%20Palestinians%20in%20Kuwait,%20Terror%20and%20Ethnic%20Cleansing,%20By%20Hassan%20A%20El-Najjar.htm
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/plohistoryofrevolution/2009/2009/08/200981294137853350.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/…/jordan-a-grim-refuge-for-kuwait-palestinians.html
I mean, who you gonna believe, Art Deco or your own lying eyes?
Richard Saunders,
Thank you.
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