Some people say that Arabs are "native Palestinians", while Jews are "invaders" and "settlers". But I read the biographies of Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, and I was confused. Who of Israeli or Palestinian leaders were born in Palestine?
ISRAELI LEADERS:
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Born 21 October 1949 in Tel Aviv.
EHUD BARAK, Born 12 February 1942 in Mishmar HaSharon, British Mandate of Palestine
ARIEL SHARON, Born 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal, British Mandate of Palestine
EHUD OLMERT, Born 30 September 1945 in Binyamina-Giv'at Ada, British Mandate of Palestine.
ITZHAK RABIN, Born 1 March 1922 in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine.
ITZHAK NAVON, Israeli President in 1977-1982. Born 9 April 1921 in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine.
EZER WEIZMAN, Israeli President in 1993-2000. Born 15 June 1924 in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine.
ARAB PALESTINIAN LEADERS:
YASSER ARAFAT, Born 24 August 1929 in Cairo, Egypt
SAEB ERAKAT, Born April 28, 1955, in Jordan. He has the Jordanian citizenship.
FAISAL ABDEL QADER AL-HUSSEINI, Born in1948 in Bagdad, Iraq.
SARI NUSSEIBEH, Born in 1949 in Damascus, Syria.
MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR, Born in 1945, in Cairo, Egypt.
So, Israeli leaders, born in Palestine, are “settlers or invaders,” while Palestinian Arab leaders who ere born in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia are “native Palestinians” ?
I would add to the previous list and comments, received in an anonymous email, Edward Said, that most prominent of anti-Israel intellectuals, whose fabricated early life story provided a template for the balance of his well-received but intrinsically flawed anti-Israel drivel. He was indeed born in Jerusalem - after his mother had lost an earlier child due to inferior medical care in their hometown of Cairo. So she went to Jerusalem to take advantage of the superior obstetrical services available there, birthed the kid, and then rushed back to her family in Cairo, where Said was reared, unlike his own fabricated childhood recollections.
I would break this list down quite differently: Liars versus truth-tellers. Or people seeking peaceful coexistence versus rabid, intolerant xenophobes. It's hard to understand how Christian Arabs get swept up in this antisemitic hostility, but people do tend to identify with their captors. Stockholm Syndrome writ large.
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