Wednesday, March 25, 2015

On Palestinians who travled

From Alfred: "I do know a person who calls himself a Palestinian whose grandfather came from Mardin, Turkey in 1915 when Syriac Christians were being slaughtered in Turkey.  During WWI thousands of Armenians and Assyrians fled from Turkey to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the smallest number came to Palestine because you have the smallest number of Armenians and Assyrian Christians in Palestine . Also, I do know of a person from the Saade family from Amioun, Lebanon who went to live in Palestine in the early 20th century who stayed in Palestine and married a local. But, we do not hear of the many thousands of Palestinians who emigrated to countries like Chile and El Salvador, which today number over 900,000 people during the same period. I know of many Syrians and Lebanese in Lebanon, Syria, and around the world who came from Palestine "a few decades earlier" and if you would look at the immigration numbers you would find out that many more times more Palestinians traveled to lands outside Palestine than "those Arabs who had traveled to those lands only a few decades earlier"."