Ever since our family moved into the neighbourhood many years ago, we have faced much hostility from our neighbours. And while we have come to find a peaceful means of coexistence with some of them, others continue to make life difficult for us.
At times, I believe that they are unhappy with our prosperity and good fortune. But I believe one of the strongest reasons is that they do not approve of our spiritual beliefs. Some have gone so far as to call for our expulsion from the community.
One of our neighbours who lives next door in government housing, has long been difficult to deal with. While it is true that their children sometimes play with ours, we have often had to forbid them from visiting because they would instigate fights.
When we first moved to our house we had no fences to indicate a property line, and allowed the free passage of our neighbours across our land. But in time we realized we would have to erect a fence, for constant trespassing with intent to harm our children.
After a time, our neighbours’ children took to throwing rocks over the fence, since they could no longer enter our property. Although most of these rocks missed our own children, a few of them came very close, and on very rare occasions they met their mark.
We called the police many times, but they told us only to cooperate with our neighbours, and in many cases they even sided with them. We soon realized that the police could not bring order and peace to our community.
Because our neighbours could not stop their children from throwing rocks, we were forced to enter their backyard and take as many rocks and stones from their property as we could find. Our neighbours were very angry with us, and called on everybody in the community to oppose our decision and even asked the police to charge us with crimes.
Although we have tried to have peaceful relations with our neighbours again, it seems they have found more rocks to throw over our fence, and we suspect that other neighbours have supplied them with these rocks.
In protest of our decision to go into our neighbours’ yard, many people have been urging others in the community, and all over the city, not to buy from our store or accept our children for employment. While this has not caused undue hardship for us, our children are treated very badly when they leave our home.
We would like to help our neighbours own their own home, and restore peace to our community, but some of them have said they will never accept our presence here. We are left with no choice but to continue to live next to our neighbours, for we will not be driven from our home. We hope for the day when everyone in our community accepts our family, and we are able to once again tear down our fence and let our children play.
Until that day comes, we will continue to be apart.
You missed the part where your neighbours actually used to own your home, but then in a far away land known as the UN, all these other people decided to give that land to you without any input from your neighbours.
When you only tell 1/4 the story, you can pretty much frame it anyway you can Adrian.
And you missed the part where that home had to be made available because of the murder of several family members who lived in another city.
For the record, I’m not Jewish or Israeli. It just made more sense to write it in the first person.
So would you be OK with losing your home if a foreign entity gave it away to another group without asking you first? Regardless of what else occurred?
Like I said, you are only telling 1/4 the story in your shitty parable Adrian. I told 1/2. There is a lot of deep, dark, awful things that have happened in history, the Middle East in particular, and Palestine/Israel even more in particular. But “commentators” like you do that history no justice by putting forth your idiotic and simplistic versions of what happened.
History is full of the transfer of land from one people to another. Assigning ownership to the Palestinians is arbitrary.
And we also left the part where the relatives of the neighbours who actually owned the house legitimately sold it to you and the neighbours didn’t like that. They thought they owned the house even though they didn’t. Their relatives did.
Yes, the Jews who immigrated to Israel after the second world war paid for the land in question. Then it all got very very messy.
At the end of the day though. Jews live there, Palestinians live there. Israel has a functioning democracy and the rule of law, and the Palestinians are ruled by thugs who don’t obey the rule of law, murder their (Palestinian) opponents, deliberately target children in their attacks on their enemies and dehumanize the Jews in the worst possible ways.
The Palestinians got a raw deal. That’s the way of the world. They can move on and build a future, or they can spiral farther downward as a society with their death cult masquerading as civil society.
But until they make the only choice that has a future, Canada will remain allied with Israel.
If I hadn’t disabled the thumbs up option on comments, I would have given you one here Andrew.
So your basic argument Adrian is “suck it up?” Will you take your own advice if one day I show up at your doorstep and turf you out and say “sorry sucker, history is full of the transfer of land from one people to another. Assigning ownership to the the McNair family is arbitrary.”
Or how about aliens come from outer space and turf us all out into Siberia?
Don’t be silly. We have laws protecting property here.
But so long as we’re being silly and hypothetical, my family used to own farmland in Ontario in the 1800′s they lost to the bank on foreclosure. Given that I currently don’t own any land in Canada, I’d like my right to return.
And you don’t think in Palestine they also had laws protecting property? You don’t think laws exist in Israel protecting property, even in the occupied territories?
And your family lost their land because they couldn’t pay the bank what they legitimately owed. Wasn’t that the law back then, and hence, in your opinion, legitimate?
Sure it was legitimate, although my great-great-grandpappy had died, leaving his 11-year-son to run the farm. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t. Such is life.
I don’t have a terrible level of sympathy for the Palestinians though, for the reasons expressed by Issachar already.
Uhmm, Peter, you’re not even telling 1/4 of the story. You’re telling the watered-down, popular history of the “poor Palestinian.”
I understand that Israel and Israelis (and Palestinian Jewish organizations in pre-state Palestine) have done many objectionable things and will likely continue to do so. But that’s not unique to them, so calling them on it is hypocritical at the very best from the most naive perspective.
But why don’t we talk about the UNBROKEN Jewish ties to the land for thousands of years…and a sizeable population in the “West Bank” as well…err, well it was unbroken until the dozens of 20th Century massacres in pre-Israel Palestine, most notably the Hebron Massacre and wave of antisemitic rioting in the 1930s.
And then there’s the number of Jews who were ethnically cleansed from all throughout the Middle East in the past century…yeah, a larger number of Jews made refugees than Palestinians, in fact. To echo Adrian and Issachar’s sentiments, those Jewish refugees resettled in Israel, Europe, North America and elsewhere and have made a new life for them. No, life’s not fair– but if you REALLY want to make peace more difficult, we could consider the grievances of these refugees which trump the Palestinian claims MASSIVELY (ie, conservative estimates of Jewish land ownership forcefully forfeited is something like 40X the size of Israel, as it is recognized by the international community. That, and the fact that Ottoman Palestine was basically a poor, rural backwater. Most Jews were forced to work in commerce as Dhimmi in the Ottoman Empire, and therefore often had to be located along wealthy trade routes). BUT, most Jewish refugees really only ask that they be RECOGNIZED as refugees in any peace settlement.
So before we let facts get in the way, let’s not let the complete picture get in the way of those “facts,” right Peter?
But now let’s look at Palestinian society and politics today– the PLO/PA has never had less legitimacy as a political body, not since the early 1970s anyway. They don’t represent Gaza, most Palestinians realize how corrupt and useless they are and there is no doubt in my mind that they are double-dealing as Arafat is now notorious for doing. They are espousing moderation but at the same time completely supportive and directive of “Israeli Apartheid Week” types of delegitimization of Israel. They talk two states but their end goal is the political destruction of Israel. They’ve just changed from violently espousing it to doing it through lawfare, academia and spending international aid money to not only line their pockets anymore, but to also spearhead efforts to portray Israel as a criminal entity deserving of being dismantled.
Then there’s the Islamofascists in Gaza. Hamas is a death cult perfectly happy with keeping Gaza impoverished as long as they can direct that unhappiness towards Israel. Nuff said with those guys.
The sad thing is that Palestinians are willingly duped time and time again that Israel is their problem. The Israelis and Jews could’ve done the exact same thing and politicized their Mizrahi refugees from the Middle East and directed them against the Arabs and Palestinians. But they didn’t– they were integrated in whichever country they entered and have reclaimed their lives. It is time the Palestinians do the same thing, and when they do, they will have themselves a state. Guaranteed.
Solidarity of Irish to Palestinians exist because Irish were once also starved to death in Genocide attempts by the English. Have Canadians ever been starved to death in violent bloody conflicts? Not in Alberta, cept maybe the natives but they don’t count right? Holocausts’ happen all the time, and are on-going to non-human animals, but like brown people maybe they don’t count. Women count cause we made them technical persons so they could vote. Did that what? Not more than only, 40, 50 years ago?
WHY WON’T ISRAEL JUST DRAW A LINE DOWN THE MAP AROUND GAZA??? AND SAY HERE, YOUR OWN COUNTRY TOO, GAZA, YAY SOLUTIONS. NO, KEEP THE VIOLENCE CYCLICAL. Instead they deny those people their rights as a seperate people deserving their own official borders.
Israel is a rogue state that acts with impunity,” Landy said.