I received this from the Columbia Spectator:
Dear Fellow Jews of Columbia,
This open letter goes out to every Jew in our community, regardless of where you find yourself standing now. Perhaps you support Israel loudly and proudly, and believe that its actions can be justified in the name of self-preservation. Or perhaps you have always stayed silent about this issue because you’ve grown up being told by friends and family that Israel is a safe haven, a beacon of hope that shone out from under the rubble of our near-destruction. Maybe you’ve been finding it harder and harder to ignore Palestinians’ stories as you grow older, and your awareness of the displacement, occupation, and murder they have suffered at the hands of the Israeli government has grown. And perhaps you are among us, who—on our own paths, made from family history, faith, and questioning—have come to the conclusion that we cannot continue making excuses on behalf of Israel for its subjugation and erasure of the Palestinian people. Perhaps you now believe that, whether we accept Israel as our homeland or not, nothing can ever justify what we recognize, even as many of our peers do not, as the mass displacement and genocide of the other people who inhabit this land; that states built to uplift one community at the expense of others are by nature violent.
The current state of Columbia’s student body now mirrors the “conflict” itself. We are choosing dissonance and division, refusing to acknowledge the basic human suffering and grief of our fellow marginalized students. It is time that we recognize that the stories the Israeli government tells us are blinding us and preventing us from looking past our own belief systems and considering the emotional and physical distress of non-Jewish students. As Jews, our faith and culture teaches us that critical thought and intellectual rigor are central pillars to our identity. We ask, where is that desire for justice now? Why are we not all fighting for peace and an end to suffering? Why is it that we accept certain narratives as unconditionally true, while disregarding others as categorically untrue? Our strength is derived from our tolerance, from our questioning, and from our ability to look past the corrupt political constructs beneath which we ourselves have suffered for centuries. This is no different. We must look no further than Talmudic scholarship to see evidence of this: “Anyone who is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not is punished for the transgressions of the entire world.”
It is a fact that the state of Israel was founded through persecution, suppression, and subjugation. According to Al-Jazeera, from 1947-1949, Jewish militants violently displaced around 750,000 Palestinians, ethnically cleansed and destroyed 530 villages, and massacred around 15,000 Palestinians in what is known as the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in order to create a Jewish state in a land full of Arabs. A letter depicting an Israeli soldier’s eyewitness report of the 1948 massacre in Al-Dawayima, one of the largest villages in the Hebron area, describes how “cultured, polite commanders, who are considered upstanding members of society, turned into base murderers, and not in the heat and passion of battle but in a system of expulsion and destruction. The fewer Arabs that will remain, the better. That principle is the political driving force of the expulsions and atrocities, to which no one objects, either in the operational command or in high command.”
There is soooo much to unpack from this letter [there is much more, this is just a part of it]. But I will suffice with this.
They quote the "Talmud". They keep and believe in nothing the Gemara says [like that Israel was given to the Jews by G-d]. When it is convenient - they quote it.
It is instructive that in order to verify their "facts" they go to Al-Jazeera. That is like going to Mein Kampf to find out the truth about the Jews.
The fact is that following the announcement of an independent Israel, five Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—immediately invaded the region in what became known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. So at war we are supposed to leave the enemy who is sworn to our destruction?
Here is from the Jewish Virtual Library website:
MYTH
“The Jews started the first war with the Arabs.”
FACT
The chairman of the Arab Higher Committee said the Arabs would "fight for every inch of their country."1 Two days later, the holy men of Al-Azhar University in Cairo called on the Muslim world to proclaim a jihad (holy war) against the Jews.2 Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee's spokesman, had told the UN prior to the partition vote the Arabs would drench "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood . . . ."3
Husseini's prediction began to come true almost immediately after the UN announced partition resolution on November 29, 1947. The Arabs declared a protest strike and instigated riots that claimed the lives of 62 Jews and 32 Arabs. Violence continued to escalate through the end of the year.4
The first large-scale assaults began on January 9, 1948, when approximately 1,000 Arabs attacked Jewish communities in northern Palestine. By February, the British said so many Arabs had infiltrated they lacked the forces to run them back.5 In fact, the British turned over bases and arms to Arab irregulars and the Arab Legion.
In the first phase of the war, lasting from November 29, 1947 until April 1, 1948, the Palestinian Arabs took the offensive, with help from volunteers from neighboring countries. The Jews suffered severe casualties and passage along most of their major roadways was disrupted.
On April 26, 1948, Transjordan's King Abdullah said:
[A]ll our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine problem have failed. The only way left for us is war. I will have the pleasure and honor to save Palestine.6
On May 4, 1948, the Arab Legion attacked Kfar Etzion. The defenders drove them back, but the Legion returned a week later. After two days, the ill-equipped and outnumbered settlers were overwhelmed. Many defenders were massacred after they had surrendered.7 This was prior to the invasion by the regular Arab armies that followed Israel's declaration of independence.
The UN blamed the Arabs for the violence. The UN Palestine Commission was never permitted by the Arabs or British to go to Palestine to implement the resolution. On February 16, 1948, the Commission reported to the Security Council:
Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein.8
The Arabs were blunt in taking responsibility for starting the war. Jamal Husseini told the Security Council on April 16, 1948:
The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.9
The British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:
Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman . . . They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.10
Despite the disadvantages in numbers, organization and weapons, the Jews began to take the initiative in the weeks from April 1 until the declaration of independence on May 14. The Haganah captured several major towns including Tiberias and Haifa, and temporarily opened the road to Jerusalem.
The partition resolution was never suspended or rescinded. Thus, Israel, the Jewish State in Palestine, was born on May 14, as the British finally left the country. Five Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq) immediately invaded Israel. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League: "It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades."11
