There is a fascinating post at Bookworm Room, quoting a contemporary Life Magazine report of the 1967 Six Day War. It is remarkable how spot-on the reporting is, clear-eyed and prescient. As the Bookworm notes though, it's the sort of clarity and honesty that's been lost in recent years.
A quote below on the manufactured refugee problem. And, yes, it was "manufactured", by the surrounding Arab states, to ensure that pressure on Israel, unto its extinction, is maintained. As it has been, to this day, a unique situation for refugees in the annals of human history.
- The 20th Century’s excellence — and its horrid defects — find some of their most vivid monuments in the hate-filled camps of Arab refugees. The refugees have been supported by the voluntary U.N. contributions of some 75 governments, not to mention the Inner Wheel Club of Hobart, Australia, the Boy Scout Union of Finland, the Women’s Club of Nes, Iceland, the Girls High School of Burton-on-Trend, England, and (for some reason) a number of automobile companies including Chrysler, Ford, G.M. and Volkswagen.
- The philanthropy, governmental and private, that has aided these displaced Arabs is genuine — and admirable. The stupidity and political selfishness that have perpetuated the problem are appalling.
- Down the ages, there have been thousands of episodes in which whole peoples fled their homes. Most were assimilated in the lands to which they fled. Brutally or beneficently, previous refugee groups were liquidated. Not until our time have there been the money, the philanthropy, the administrative skill, the hygienic know-how and the peculiar kind of nationalism which, in combination, could take a wave of refugees and freeze it into a permanent and festering institution.
- In the wake of Israeli victories, the refugee camps received thousands of new recruits, and there may be more if, as seems likely, Israel successfully insists on some enlargement of its boundaries.Thus the refugee problem, one of the main causes of Middle East instability, is about to be magnified.
