We do take mild exception, however, to the Blog Burst that was cross-posted today on about 65 blogs, including Zman Biur.
This Blog Burst, about the UN vote on November 29, 1948 that established Israel, makes a wonderful concluding point ("it is imperative that we recognize with gratitude those countries who stood by our side at this crucial moment in history.') But along the way the facts are forgotten.
For example, nothing is said about Lod, Ramle, or Deir Yassin, (or any of the countless acts of violence committed by Arabs against Jews, for that matter.) Instead, the murder of "six Jews in a bus making [SIC] to Jerusalem, and another in the Tel-Aviv - Jaffa area" is presented as if this was the sole atrocity committed in those days. And the Blog Burst oversimplifies the Arab's reasons for rejecting the partition plan.
For the Arabs, even this [the partition plan] was too much. Though they had never had an independent state in Palestine and were now offered one, they would agree to no arrangement which would offer recognition to the Jews.This is pure speculation. We don't know why the Palestinians made the error of rejecting partition. It's not at all clear that "recognition of the Jews" was the key stumbling block. Perhaps "recognition of the Jews" would have been forthcoming if the split had been different. Remember, the partition plan proposed to give the minority population an exclusive and hegemonic right to the majority of the land, granting 55 percent of the land to a group that comprised only 30 percent of the population, and who owned just 6 percent of the land. Perhaps this, and not a blind hatred of Jews, was the Arab reason for rejecting the plan? Also, the partition plan put 407,000 Palestinian Arabs within the Jewish state. Perhaps the Arabs objected to this? Certainly, Ben Gurion would have rejected a plan that put so many Jews under Arab rule. (Though, to his everlasting credit, he did accept a plan that gave him far less than he had wanted, and the Arabs should have, too.)
Finally, the writing of the Blog Burst is boring and the syntax is terrible. I admit, mine is sometimes worse, but I don't cross-post on 65 other blogs (yet). Here's one example of the sort of error a good writer, or a good editor, would have caught: "This war claimed the lives of 6,000 Jews, or 1% of the total Jewish population in 1948 - the per capita equivalent of the US today losing 3,000,000 lives..."
Per capita means per unit of population, or per person. Substitute English for Latin in the sentence above and you will see the result is nonsense. And there are other examples.
Given these errors of language and history, why did Biur and the 65 others accept this Blog Burst for publication?
