Saturday, October 15, 2016

Blatman's Splat

Daniel Blatman, in his response to Benny Morris' attack on his earlier piece, among other charges and claims writes:

"In other words, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who belong to the side that began the fighting have to be expelled." 

There is a sleight-of-hand there.

a) were there truly hundreds of thousands?

b) were they all innocent?

c) when did that fighting actually begin and what was the importance of that?

What do I mean in asking those questions?

Well,

a) of course there were, but how many? and how many left at what periods during the fighting? if they left during the first two months or so, when the Arabs definitely weren't doing bad at all in the fighting, can we count them as being ethnically cleansed?

b) what is "innocent"? how many had participated in the 1936-39 slaughter of Jews? in the 1929 riots?  how many provided material support to those terrorists? and how many were assisting them during 1947-1948 in various ways?

c) did the fighting begin on November 30th? or earlier, before the Partition proposal? did some fighting happen before which was a continuation of the riots and pogroms intended to ethnically cleanse Jews?

^

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