Jim, do you have any clue where the Jews who came to Israel in the 1940s even came from? Nearly a million of them came from their neighboring Arab countries who, infuriated by the formation of Israel, stripped them of their money, their land, their wealth, and drove them into exile.

The expulsion of "Palestinians" came about during a massive migration period of the entire region, with Jews stripped of their land moving to Israel, and "Palestinians" stripped of their land being sent to the neighboring countries.

I put "Palestinians" in quotes because in 1948, the notion of a distinct Palestinian people hadn't been invented yet. Back then, they were known as Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese.

The total population of Arabs in Israel in 1948 is hard to estimate, but it was probably no more than a few hundred thousand. Israel was sparsely inhabited and completely undeveloped, essentially empty desert, which is why Jews saw the opportunity to build a homeland there.

What happened 1948-now?

Enraged Arab countries declared two wars on Israel.

The people who cry that the land in Gaza and The West Bank was "stolen" never bother to mention exactly how Israel came to "occupy" that land. Ancient history I guess.

Nor do they ask when the concept of a "Palestinian People" (as opposed to people who live in Palestine, which would make anyone Palestinian who lived there) became distinct from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Here's a clue: it came into wide-spread use in the 1960s.

So if you want to talk about the "land" Israel occupies in isolation, without context for how Israel acquired it, that's fine. If you want to talk about how Israel has sealed off checkpoints and borders without mentioning the Second Intifada and the 500+ suicide bombers who passed through the old open borders, that's also fine. If you want to act like there's always been millions of Palestinians penned up in cages since the beginning of Israel, that's fine too. If you want to ignore that half of Israel was robbed and expelled just as horribly in the 1940s as the Palestinians were, that's fine, too.

Actually no. It's not fine. Learn some context.

There is much to criticize Israel over. But if you refuse to place these events into context, you're simply starting with your conclusion (Israel=war-mongering oppressor, Palestinians=long-suffering innocents), and you do a disservice to us all.

You might want to read up on the rights of Arab Israeli citizens. They have far more rights than Jews do in Arab countries.

By the way, care to discuss women's rights in Arab countries? I know it wouldn't fit your grand narrative and all. Because it's fun to type "tribalists" a lot.

I'm not sure how you can read an article clearly stating we have little way of knowing the population of Palestinians in Israel in 1948 and then tell me I'm definitively wrong.

First off, your article estimates the TOTAL Palestinian population at the time, including the West Bank and Gaza.

The question is how many Palestinians were displaced in 1948 by the formation of Israel (original borders, not post 1967 borders including Gaza and W.B.). The likelihood is, given that some became Israeli citizens, it was as little as 100,000. Far less than Jews stripped of their land and money by Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Estimates are that over 800,000 Jews were stripped of their land and money in the 1940s by neighboring Arab countries and sent into exile (most emigrated to Israel or the United States).

Waldman, who now lives in San Rafael, is a Mizrahi Jew, one of nearly 856, 000 Jews who fled Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen in an exodus that began after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and ended about 1970. Today, only an estimated 5,000 Jews remain in Arab lands, most of them in Morocco.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/28/MNGB65SHHV1.DTL

Do you weep for the Lebanese, Moroccan, Syrian, Tunisian and Yemenese Jews who lost their land in the 1940s? Do you demand JUSTICE for these acts?

This context is vital when understanding the suffering of the Palestinians. The massive migration of people among these countries did not occur in a Palestinians-only vacuum.

This is last historical post, as per Glenn's request that we only discuss his facts (while he questions our biases and motivations).

Clearly much brighter people than you. Israeli-Arab warfare has not been going on for "centuries." Perhaps you're thinking of Christian-Arab warfare. Far and away the more war-mongering and massacring religion of the past 1000 years has been Christianity. Convenient how that always gets left out of our history books.

The West Bank and Gaza may have been part of the mandate, but they were not a part of the formation of Israel, and the various Arabs living there (soon to be grouped together as "Palestinians") were not displaced by the formation of Israel at that point.

This distinction is crucial, because you cite nearly a million Palestinians in "Israel" in 1948, and that is empirically not true. Exaggerating the displacement of Palestinians because there are so many in Israel today (thanks to their prodigious birth-rate, nearly 7 children per family) helps confuse what happened historically.