“In our political argument abroad,” Ben-Gurion said, “we minimize Arab opposition to us, but let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. Politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. Behind the terrorism is a movement, which, though primitive, is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice.”

Chomsky adds further context to the Arab perspective that has not changed in three-quarters of a century of strife by explaining how they rejected the idea that they had a moral obligation to sacrifice their land to compensate “for the crimes committed by Europeans against the Jews.” The idea, he notes, had taken hold in the West, but, he writes, Arabs, “perhaps wondered why a more appropriate response would not have been to remove the population of Bavaria and turn it into a Jewish state – or given the self-righteous moralizing they hear from the United States, why the project could not have been carried out in Massachusetts or New York.”

Source: The Truth Among Ourselves – » The Australian Independent Media Network