Response of Ami Zehbi

Four years after the 150th Anniversary of Schneller Schools, we received a response from Ami Zehbi to the alumni memoirs.
Lebanon is in a state of war with Israel, and replying to Ami is against the law as it classifies as communications with the enemy. For the sake of objectivity, we publish Ami Zehbi’s response with the following remarks:

The Schneller Orphanage and Schneller Schools have always been committed to peace and have always worked to alleviate the suffering of people irrespective of race, color, or religion.
The successive generations of the Schneller family have always been committed Christians helping orphans and providing them with care and education in obedience to our loving Lord, Jesus Christ.
Wars and conflicts bring death and suffering to innocent people on all sides, and all must work for establishing peace and harmony among all nations.
The Palestinian Israeli conflict brought, and continues to bring, enormous suffering to millions of innocent people: Arab, Israeli, and from among the international community at large. It destabilized the whole world for so long!
Extremism pulled back humanity to the dark ages. Brutality continues to escalate, bringing so-called human beings to an unseen level of savageness. Humanity must unite in a collective effort to bring peace to this region and the whole world.
The establishment of the State of Israel did not occur in a land with no local inhabitants. The Palestinian people were forcefully and brutally evicted out of their homeland, and they continue to endure enormous brutality and suffering to this very day.
The Palestinians also responded with forceful brutality, and millions of innocent people suffered, and continue to suffer, on both sides.
The only way out of the terrible atrocities that are committed by both sides is peace. The two-state solution should allow both Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully, side-by-side, ending war and conflict once, and for all.

The response of Ami Zehbi:

Dear Schneller alumni,
I write this, having read your letter Response to False Information about the Schneller Orphanage in Wikipedia Encyclopedia
This is what an Israeli Jew can say:
The relevant details written in Wikipedia are based on a non-nationalist, famous researcher of Jerusalem, David Kroyanker.
The good relations between Schneller students and teachers and the Jews in Jerusalem are well known and documented. I've read even, that your print press produced Hebrew Zionist newspapers and the big dictionary of Ben Yehuda.
Also I take it for granted that the British (1917 – 1948) also were in good contacts with you (at least to 1940) as you both are Protestant. Therefore, I guess their decision to expel the staff and close the place and put the army inside, was well based on facts that they knew. And please remember that the British did it, not the Israelis.
As you mention, the relation of the Israelis towards the old staff after 1948 might be the outcome of the war for the Israeli independence. But please note that your attitude to the Zionist activity to buy lands also is written in the light of that war.
When you write
The Arab students and members of staff, at the time, were probably filled with hatred against the Zionist immigrants who were terrorizing them and taking over their land, as much as the Zionists were determined to eradicate them from Palestine by terror and genocide.
This is a lie! On the contrary, Arab terror killed 135 Jews in August 1929, and they also did in the Arab rebellion 1936-1939. You are welcomed to look at newspapers of the time.
So maybe the Arabs in Israel didn’t like the idea that the Jew are settling and buying land, but terror? Eradication? Genocide? These are terms of post 1948 speaking, not in 1929 nor 1936. This simply was not the case.
Before 1948, in the British time, Jews couldn’t do whatever they liked. All lands were bought in full money from Arabs who wanted to sell them.  "State land" was land of the British regime and not the Jewish, and so Arab people were not expelled from their villages before the 1948 war.
When you write, you (and anyone) must have an objective look, from both sides.
Thanks
Ami