From: Ismail Zayid [mailto:izayid@eastlink

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----- Original Message -----

From: Ismail Zayid

To: Halifax Herald

Cc: Bev Dauphinee

Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 3:01 PM

Subject: How about historic facts?

Dec. 10, 2008.

The Editor.

The Halifax Herald.

Dear Editor;

Dave Fineberg [letter Dec. 10] makes statements that defy historic facts. When the UN Partition reolution # 181 was passed, under pressure by the US, on Nov. 29, 1947, the Jews in Palestine constituted 31% of the population, mostly recent and illegal immigrants, and owned exactly 5.6% of the land in Palestine. Yet that resolution apportioned 56% of the land for a Jewish state. The Arabs rejected that resolution because it was unjust. I will let David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister explain why the Arabs refused to accept the theft of their historic land. In a discussion, in 1956, with Nahum Goldmann, the then president of the World Jewish Congress, Ben Gurion stated: “I do not understand your optimism. If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country..... There has been anti- Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: We have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” ( quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox) 1978, pp121.)

Interestingly, it was not only the Arabs who rejected the partition resolution. The Zionist political leaders, at the time, expressed clearly their expansionist designs. Menachem Begin, Leader of the Herut Party, the forerunner of today's Likud party, stated: " The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised." [The Revolt.p.335]. Ben Gurion, stated after the conquest of 78% of historic Palestine: " To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion." [Rebirth and Destiny of Israel. 1954. p419]. And the expansionist program continued, in the wars of aggression that Israel waged against its Arab neighbours in 1956. 1967. 1978, 1982 and 2006.

Be that as it may, all the Arab states have been offering Israel peace and full recognition since 2002, conditional on its withdrawal from the territories it occupied illegally in 1967 and to comply with international law and the right of return for the refugees, to their homes, from which they were systematically expelled by the Israeli armed forces in 1948.

Yours sincerely,

Ismail Zayid, M.D.