Q: How could we answer the claim of Arafat who says that the Jewish people are throwing him out of his homeland?
A: And the answer is how would you answer the claim of a man who at gunpoint drove you out of your house and later when you come back to claim your house, he says, “Look, I’m living here. It’s my house now. You want to drive me out?!”
We have a claim to Eretz Yisroel and it’s written black on white. We have a charter. The Torah states openly it belongs to us. It was given to us and we lived there. The fact that we were driven out at gunpoint, at knifepoint, doesn’t mean we lost the rights to be there.
Now, I’m not saying the Zionists were justified in taking over Eretz Yisroel but we certainly are justified in saying that the land belongs to us. Whether we’re going to do something about it or not, it could be we shouldn’t do anything about it. But whatever it is, there’s not the slightest question that we lived there and we were driven out by force. The Romans drove us out. And therefore it’s our land. Should we now go by force and drive out the inhabitants? That’s a question I’m not going to discuss. It could very well be not.
But Arafat was not driven out. He could have lived in Eretz Yisroel. He was a Palestinian. Nobody was stopping him from living peacefully. Who told him run away? It’s because he was a mischief maker that he had to run away. Mischief makers will be apprehended and be punished but that’s no claim against the people who are willing to punish him. If he wouldn’t be a mischief maker, he could live peacefully in Eretz Yisroel. So therefore there’s no claim of Palestinian Arabs against the Jews if they make trouble and have to leave.
TAPE # 482 (December 1983)
