THE UNITED NATIONS & PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
by Hilda Terry

Watching the Israeli press expressing the naive observations of a
generation that never lived through more than the last years of this century
has been very hard on me. I have to keep reminding myself of how difficult it
was when we were kids, trying to understand why our grandparents who vomited
at the very thought of eating blood would have killed the baby Jesus for his
blood to put in matsoths. Jewish kids have to learn these things from the
street--on their own. None of this is ever mentioned. Who can blame
sympathetic young Jews for accepting the openly enacted fraud of 4 million
Palestinian Refugees made homeless by the Jews in 1948? As for the refugees
themselves, most of them are living with the lies their parents used to get
INTO the life sustaining refugee camps.

All the same, when, a coupla years ago, the Jewish press began claiming
"only 600,000 Arab refugees." I had to wonder where they got that figure.
There weren't 600,000 Arabs IN Israel in 1948. I have in hand, a published
1947 census, in graphs, showing 180,000 Arabs. Britain's census for the area
on the eve of their departure was: 483,000 settled Arabs, 56,800 nomads
(Bedouins who had worked with the Zionists in rejuvenating the land, included
in the citizenship laws for Jews), and 36,000 Arab migrants, mostly
illegals. The official census was 575,000 Arabs, 575,000 Jews and 575,000
others.

Israel. 8,000 square miles, is only 10% of Palestine. In 1948, 85% of
Israel had been bought and paid for by the Zionists, the Jewish National
Fund, Jewish philanthropists and other Jews, leaving roughly 1200 square
miles--a little larger than Central Park--for Arabs and others. When the
Arabs use the population figures of 1917 to prove their majority in
Palestine, (as Hannan Ashwari did on TV recently) they KNOW they are
including Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank before the partition. Israel's
museums treasure correspondence thanking Jews for helping them get it back.
They KNOW they HAVE their Arab land; their Arab State. The name Palestine
was dropped because, for 3,000 years the word Palestine, never anyone's
country, had simply meant "the Land of the Jews."

From 1945 to 1955, my husband and I lived in Tudor City, overlooking the
birth of the United Nations. Working at home, we had two radios. My husband
listened to the ball games. I listened to the UN sessions. I was writing a
book. I spent a lot of time reading foreign newspapers in the 5th Avenue
library down the street. I still have notes and published records of that
history.

The United Nations adopted the British census. That has to be the census
of record. On looking for corroboration of this record in the annals of the
U.N., I found a committee of Arabs commissioned to investigate the refugee
situation. They came in with repeatedly inflated ESTIMATEs . Impoverished
masses from all over the oil rich impoverished land had descended on the
bounty of UNWRA as manna from Heaven. Births were recorded in the names of
father's son, and again, sons of the father. Deaths were seldom reported.
UNWRA registrations were traded as the most valuable asset in the economy of
the people. Barring any investigation in the camps, using every pretense, the
Arabs systematically built up the number with touchingly indigent Arabs from
all over. By 1969, UNWRA was feeding 1 million 300,000. Apparently the new
Jews trustingly picked up one of those Arab dominated UN estimates.

Actually, In determining the official refugee count after the dust had
settled, having first estimated 250, UN Delegate, Sir Alexander Cadogan,
subtracted the remaining population -- (170,000 home owners plus 285,000
nomads, transients and other settlers) --455,000 in all-- from the British
census of 575,000, finding a total of 120,000 Arabs dislocated by the
creation of the state of Israel.

On December 11, 1948, we listened to a debate over an Israeli proposal
for a commission to grant the refugees "permission" to return to their homes.
Provision was added for compensation of properties abandoned by those
choosing not to return. The Arab bloc vetoed in a body, passionately
objecting to the inclusion of the condition that returnees "in no way impair
the safety of the state." Some refugees accepted the offer privately. Most
of the 120,000 were persuaded by their leaders to hold out for fifth column
privileges. The Arabs remember this debate as about "rights." That still
being the demand, wouldn't you say any possible "right of return" that may
have existed was forfeited long ago?

Those refugees could easily have been resettled and employed in the
properties and businesses abandoned or confiscated from approximately the
same number of Jews thrown out of the Arab countries that year, for whom no
compensation was ever discussed or considered.

Concern for even Arab refugees alone was just NEVER on Islam's agenda.