David Shipler, author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Sprits in a Promised Land, wrote his book in 1986 after serving as the bureau chief of The New York Times in Jerusalem from 1979-84. The biggest and most important them of the book reflected the struggle between the Jews and Palestinian people in their search for their own homeland. The author references the Law of Physics, saying that "two objects may not occupy the same space"; this is two say that the people there are not a unified nation but rather two distinctive peoples and political entities laying claim to the same place to call their own. It personifies the constant uphill battle between Palestinian Nationalism and Jewish Zionism and the effects of this long term conflict on both people and future generations. This concept is reflected by both sides and the unique dynamic present in Jerusalem in the early 1980s. The two sides have a skewed perception of the other as well as misguided racial stereotypes, and some have very little interest in the reasoning behind the conflict.
The Jewish people around the globe view Jerusalem as a sacred place that is owned solely by the Jews. It represents a place where a historically oppressed people may call a safe haven and home. It is in a sense a type of entitlement that the Israels feel they have earned through a long history of discrimination from Babylonians during the Babylonian Captivity, Roman and Egyptian enslavement, and intense Western European anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Shipler repeatedly emphasizes that the Israeli Jewish public exists completely unaware of the day-to-day occurrences in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Arab communities within Israel itself; People who have been stripped of their homes and farm lands by the Jews immigrating to Israel. This isolation from the Arabs under Israeli rule, combined with the fear and hatred created by decades of war and violence, has led to the racist stereotypes.
This land is called Israel. Millions of people throughout the years have given their lives in a quest for the Promised Land. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, all have lost their lives fighting for this land. Although most recently, Arabs and Israelis have been fighting on this land. ... It stated that the land of Israel was and is promised to them by God himself. ...
Prior to the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, important promises were made to both the Arabs and the Israelis. In order to receive Arab backing against the Ottoman Empire in WWI, the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence in 1915 mapped out the land that Britain was to cede to the Arabs upon allied victory. ... (Bard 84-5) Jews were not allowed to buy land in Transjordan and Arabs were not allowed to buy land in Palestine. ... Unable to cede a small amount of land to the Jews, they attacked Israel once it is claimed independent. The Jews fought ferociously, and the Arabs were left with less land and a ...
Prior to the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, important promises were made to both the Arabs and the Israelis. In order to receive Arab backing against the Ottoman Empire in WWI, the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence in 1915 mapped out the land that Britain was to cede to the Arabs upon allied victory. ... (Bard 84-5) Jews were not allowed to buy land in Transjordan and Arabs were not allowed to buy land in Palestine. ... Unable to cede a small amount of land to the Jews, they attacked Israel once it is claimed independent. The Jews fought ferociously, and the Arabs were left with less land and a ...
Islam teaches that Palestine is the land of the prophets, and Muslims consider the land to be holy. ... The UN resolution invited Jews from other countries, mostly displaced from Germany to come and settle in the British controlled Palestinian territory. ... Large scale fighting among the Jews and the Palestinian and their Arab allies became the inevitable result. ... This increased tensions with other Arab countries, which saw a part of the Mid-East that had been Arab for centuries, had been converted by Israel from an Arab land with some minor Western influence to a Western land with littl...
They didn't even receive a quarter of the land they were promised. ... In 1947 the UN passed a partition on 2/3 majority that created western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state; 75% of the land given to the Jews was desert. ... Jewish perspective The Jews saw this whole war as a way to get their land back that was promised to them. The persecution of Jews in Europe for so long would drive anybody to retaliation in fighting for what was promised. Zionists led the Jews back to the "Holy Land;" the land that was theirs. ...
Essentially the struggle is over land. ... However, Arabs' claims to the land are based on continuous residency in the country for hundreds of years and the fact that they represented the demographic majority. ... However, if the Arabs engaged in a biblical argument, they would argue that since Abraham's son Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, then God's promise of the land to the children of Abraham includes Arabs as well. Overall, they do not believe that they should surrender their land in order to compensate Jews for the crimes that Europe has committed against them. ...
., the Jews have had control over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. ... During the first half of the 20th century there were large waves of immigration of Jews back to Israel from the Arab countries and from Europe. ... Jews come from Judea, not Palestinians. ... The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham. 2) Jewish people settled and developed the land. 3) International community granted political sovereignty ...
The Jews were the first to settle in Palestine in 1200 BC. 1000 years later the Jews were driven out of Palestine by the Romans. 500 years later the Arabs conquer Palestine. ... For these reasons Jerusalem is the Jews" most Holy city. ... This caused hatred of the Jews by the Arabs. ... In the McMahon letters the Jews had been promised a "National Home for the Jews" in 1915 but in 1939 Britain broke this agreement. ... The UN originally gave the land to the Arabs in 1948 when the partition took place. ...
There is no way around it the Jews and the Arabs have been at war for centuries over land. The question at hand is whose land is it? ... When God promised Avraham the land, which is known as Yisrael. ... B"resheet 15:18 Adonai made a covenant with Avram: I have given this land to your descendants - from the Vadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates river. ... Not only are the Arabs at war with the Jews but also, are at war with anyone who doesn't believe the way they do. ...
