Here.
This video almost makes me sick to my stomach. It shows how in the War of 1947 (the so-called Israeli War of Independence) in the course of The Nakba, or the forcible expulsion of 800, 000 Palestinians from their land, the Jews actually stole just about every single book in Palestine!
One thing that people do not realize about The Nakba is that it plays into some nasty stereotypes about Jews. The stereotype of the grasping, greedy Jew is hard one to get rid of, and Jewish folks’ behavior doesn’t exactly work to disabuse us of that notion!
Anyway, not only were 800,000 Arabs thrown out of their homes and not allowed to return. They were not allowed to take anything with them when they left. They were ordered out of their homes by Jewish militias. In the wake of these Jewish militias were various Jewish “thieving crews” for want of a better word. What did they want? The stuff. You know, the stuff. As per the old Jewish stereotype, the Jew always wants “the stuff.”
Various thieving crews were assigned to steal various types of items. One crew was called the book crew. It was more or less the “book stealing gang.” Yes, the fledgling state of Israel actually set up a little militia for the sole purpose of stealing just about every book in Palestine. Arab prisoners were press-ganged into gathering up the books from vacated homes. Jews then moved into the Arab homes, and they every single thing that was in the home for themselves. All of the furniture, the clothing, the silverware, the paintings, everything, everything, everything, the Jews stole it all. They literally stole everything in Palestine that was not locked down.
And you wonder why the Arabs are pissed.
These stolen books still exist to this day. They are in special Jewish institutions in Israel, and all of them are outrageously labeled “abandoned property.” The nerve!
Of course what followed were pogroms against Jews in Arab lands. Jews were thrown out of these lands, and they were also forced to leave all of their belongings in the country. They could hardly take anything they owned with them. The difference is that the Arab Jews only want to be compensated for their “stuff.” None of them want to go back and live in their Arab countries. They are now quite happy in Israel.
However, the Palestinians not only want their stuff back, but they also want to go back to their homes, and they can’t. This desire to go home and the Jews’ refusal to let the Arabs go back is what makes the Palestinian refugee question different from just about every other refugee and ethnic cleansing question on Earth. Persians who left Iraq? Croats, Bosnians and Serbs in former Yugoslavia? Russians who left Chechnya? Pandits who left Kashmir? None of those people want to go home and none of them are prevented from going home anyway. Palestine and Israel is the only place on Earth where the refugees want to go home but are prevented from going home. And this makes it a very special case.
I still can’t believe those Jews stole all those books! Those bastards.
