Talk:Maximos V Hakim

Childers and orders

"Another stock quotation down the years has been that, supposedly, of the Greek-Catholic Archbishop of Galilee. For example, Israel's Abba Eban told the U.N. Special Political Committee in 1957 that the Archbishop had "fully confirmed'." that the Arabs were urged to flee by their own leaders. I wrote to His Grace, asking for his evidence of such orders. I hold signed letters from him, with permission to publish, in which he has categorically denied ever alleging Arab evacuation orders; he states that no such orders were ever given. He says that his name has been abused for years; and that the Arabs fled through panic and forcible eviction by Jewish troops." - Childers

What Eban actually said Hakim said was:

"The refugees had been confident that their absence from Palestine would not last long; that they would return within a few days [or] within a week or two; their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there would be no need for panic or fear of a long exile."

Eban does not say that Hakim says that there were orders, or that Hakim "fully confirmed" that there were orders. In a way Childers is beating a straw man, which he actually acknowleges himself when he says, in his essay The Wordless Wish, (ref on article page): "It will be noted that this statement does not, in fact, allege that the Arab leaders ordered Palestine civilians to evacuate."

Still, I thought it important to include more of Childers' letter from the Archbishop, even though Childers is a highly biased source, because it throws more light on the Bishop's thoughts on the matter, and the article is, after all, about the Bishop. Snakeswithfeet (talk) 07:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)