No ‘historical injustice’

I write in response to Gershon Baskin’s “November 29 – a national Holiday” (Encountering Peace, November 30), taking serious issue with his premise, in reference to the United Nations’ partition plan of November 29, 1947, that it is now up to Israel to make compromises in order to “complete the fulfillment of the resolution and partition the land into two states for two people.”

Baskin writes: “Yes, it is true the Palestinians rejected the partition plan and paid a very painful price for their rejection.” But there is no mention of the enormous price Israel paid – the loss of 6,000 soldiers and civilians, killed in an existential war initiated by the Palestinian Arabs and their Arab allies, intent on driving all Jews out of the area. There would have been no need for Israel to fight its War of Independence but for their aggression and intransigence.

When the Arabs living in Palestine rejected the UN partition plan and attacked the nascent Israeli state with evil intent, they became fully responsible for all the consequences of their aggressive actions.

There was no “historical injustice done to the Palestinian Arab people in its displacement and in being deprived of the right to self-determination following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State,” contrary to the claims made in the PLO’s 1988 independence declaration. The truth is exactly the opposite: The Palestinians were offered land on which to establish an independent state where they could live with full rights of self-determination, just as Israelis have for the past 70 years.

The only injustice was carried out by those who chose to viciously attack the Jews in an attempt to deprive them of their rights under the same partition plan.

Since 1947, the “Palestinians” have at least three times rejected offers of land for a state. Written into the Covenant of the PLO in 1964 was Article 19, which stated: “The partitioning of Palestine and the establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void, whatever time has elapsed.”

Only someone who is completely ignorant or one who refuses to acknowledge the facts could possibly believe that it is now the duty of Israel to once again partition the land so that, as Baskin states, “a holiday... could be shared by both people living between the River and the Sea .... ” BARBARA BROWN Netanya