The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East
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Introduction
Early History of the Region
The British Mandate Period: 1920-1948
The UN Partition of Palestine
Statehood and Expulsion - 1948
The 1967 War and Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
[1973 War (Known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War) - Addendum by If
Americans Knew]
The History of Terrorism in the Region
Jewish Criticism of Zionism
Zionism and the Holocaust
General Considerations
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
Intifada 2000 And The "Peace Process"
Views Of The Future
Conclusion I For Jewish Readers
Conclusion II
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for
an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the
conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault,
the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth
listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real
grievance: their homeland for over a thousand years was taken, without their
consent and mostly by force, during the creation of the state of Israel. And
all subsequent crimes - on both sides - inevitably follow from this original
injustice.
This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process
occurred and what a moral solution to the region's problems should consist
of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you
owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical
record.
Introduction
The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in
the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land
and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with
increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably
stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then
forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation
continues up to today.
The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as
the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was
that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a
practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that
Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land
bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people
and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which
continues to the present).
The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists'
intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying
because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab
society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project
never could have been realized without the military backing of the British.
The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been
Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)
In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that
the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The Arabs'
opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally
reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.
One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present
here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe
that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their
situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people
until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where
Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish
oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the
late 1930's and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real
desperation.
But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic "land without people
for a people without land" was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919.
This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.
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Early History of the Region
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of
Canaan was occupied by Canaanites.
"Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is
today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those
who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in
the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers,
pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians,
Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes." Marcia Kunstel and Joseph
Albright, "Their Promised Land."
The present-day Palestinians' ancestral heritage
"But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were
additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...And that parent tree was
Canaanite...[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.] made Moslem converts
of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with
the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where
the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin." Illene Beatty, "Arab and Jew
in the Land of Canaan."
The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine
"The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists
base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it
fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the
ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David's conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the
wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish
rule." Illene Beatty, "Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan."
More on Canaanite civilization
"Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a
big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the
sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites
pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than
imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli
Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites
in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE." The Jewish Bulletin, July
31st, 1998.
How long has Palestine been a specifically Arab country?
"Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end
of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its
characteristics - including its name in Arabic, Filastin - became known to
the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its
religious significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman
Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty
percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided
between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people
believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their
feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the
steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important
to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the
establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other
than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was
174,606 against a total of 1,033,314." Edward Said, "The Question of
Palestine."
How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it
change?
"[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name
of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never
previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to
traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally
masha'a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a
peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held
before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on
to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the provisions of
the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead,
members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the
legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin
[peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered
that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to
Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being
purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by
foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine." Rashid Khalidi,
"Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens
Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent
anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community?
"The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was 'to redeem the land of
Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.'...As early as
1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha'am wrote that the Arabs "understood very well
what we were doing and what we were aiming at'...[Theodore Herzl, the
founder of Zionism, stated] 'We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab]
population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit
countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the
process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out
discreetly and circumspectly'...At various locations in northern Palestine
Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee
owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund's request, evicted
them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism.
They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want
to exacerbate relations with the Arabs." John Quigley, "Palestine and
Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Inherent anti-Semitism? - continued
"Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old
Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political
reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab
population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the
1880's...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to
dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it." Don Peretz, "The
Arab-Israeli Dispute."
Inherent anti-Semitism? - continued
"[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East
became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and
elsewhere...In the Holy Land...they lived together in [relative] harmony, a
harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was
the 'rightful' possession of the 'Jewish people' to the exclusion of its
Moslem and Christian inhabitants." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Jews attitude towards Arabs when reaching Palestine.
"Serfs they (the Jews) were in the lands of the Diaspora, and suddenly
they find themselves in freedom [in Palestine]; and this change has awakened
in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and
cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even
boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and
dangerous inclination." Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am, quoted in Sami Hadawi,
"Bitter Harvest."
Proposals for Arab-Jewish Cooperation
"An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in
1907...called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of
settlement activity...Like Ahad-Ha'am in 1891, Epstein claims that no good
land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession...Epstein's
solution to the problem, so that a new "Jewish question" may be avoided, is
the creation of a bi-national, non-exclusive program of settlement and
development. Purchasing land should not involve the dispossession of poor
sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming community, where the
Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries should
be non-exclusivist and education bilingual...The vision of non-exclusivist,
peaceful cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few
takers. Epstein was maligned and scorned for his faintheartedness." Israeli
author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
Was Palestine the only, or even preferred, destination of Jews facing
persecution when the Zionist movement started?
"The pogroms forced many Jews to leave Russia. Societies known as
'Lovers of Zion,' which were forerunners of the Zionist organization,
convinced some of the frightened emigrants to go to Palestine. There, they
argued, Jews would rebuild the ancient Jewish 'Kingdom of David and Solomon,'
Most Russian Jews ignored their appeal and fled to Europe and the United
States. By 1900, almost a million Jews had settled in the United States
alone." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by The People Press Palestine Book
Project.
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The British Mandate Period
1920-1948
The Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
"The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British
Government...was made a) by a European power, b) about a non-European
territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the
native majority resident in that territory...[As Balfour himself wrote in
1919], 'The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo
French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman
colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their
independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of
Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine
we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of
the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are committed to
Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in
age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder
import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit
that ancient land,'" Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
Wasn't Palestine a wasteland before the Jews started immigrating
there?
"Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor,
recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to
protect Arab agriculture. He said 'all cultivable land was occupied; that no
cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold
to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators'...The
Colonial Office rejected the recommendation." John Quigley, "Palestine and
Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Were the early Zionists planning on living side by side with Arabs?
In 1919, the American King-Crane Commission spent six weeks in Syria
and Palestine, interviewing delegations and reading petitions. Their report
stated, "The commissioners began their study of Zionism with minds
predisposed in its favor...The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's
conferences with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to
a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants
of Palestine, by various forms of purchase...
"If [the] principle [of self-determination] is to rule, and so the
wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done
with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population
of Palestine - nearly nine-tenths of the whole - are emphatically against
the entire Zionist program.. To subject a people so minded to unlimited
Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender
the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted...No
British officers, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist
program could be carried out except by force of arms.The officers generally
thought that a force of not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be
required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a
strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program...The initial claim,
often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to
Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be
seriously considered." Quoted in "The Israel-Arab Reader" ed. Laquer and
Rubin.
Side by side - continued
"Zionist land policy was incorporated in the Constitution of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine...'land is to be acquired as Jewish property
and..the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the
Jewish National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the
inalienable property of the Jewish people.' The provision goes to stipulate
that 'the Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish
labor'...The effect of this Zionist colonization policy on the Arabs was
that land acquired by Jews became extra-territorialized. It ceased to be
land from which the Arabs could ever hope to gain any advantage...
"The Zionists made no secret of their intentions, for as early as
1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist Commission, boldly told the Court of
Inquiry, 'there can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a
Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a
Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently
increased.' He then asked that only Jews should be allowed to bear arms."
Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Given Arab opposition to them, did the Zionists support steps towards
majority rule in Palestine?
"Clearly, the last thing the Zionists really wanted was that all the
inhabitants of Palestine should have an equal say in running the country...
[Chaim] Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that representative government
would have spelled the end of the [Jewish] National Home in Palestine...
[Churchill declared,] 'The present form of government will continue for many
years. Step by step we shall develop representative institutions leading to
full self-government, but our children's children will have passed away
before that is accomplished.'" David Hirst, "The Gun and the Olive Branch."
Denial of the Arabs' right to self-determination
"Even if nobody lost their land, the [Zionist] program was unjust in
principle because it denied majority political rights... Zionism, in
principle, could not allow the natives to exercise their political rights
because it would mean the end of the Zionist enterprise." Benjamin
Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism
"In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a nationalist revolt...
David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal
discussion, he noted that 'in our political argument abroad, we minimize
Arab opposition to us,' but he urged, 'let us not ignore the truth among
ourselves.' The truth was that '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'... The revolt was
crushed by the British, with considerable brutality." Noam Chomsky, "The
Fateful Triangle."
Gandhi on the Palestine conflict - 1938
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs
to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today
cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must
look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to
enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be
performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in
Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers
with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am
not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of
non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable
encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of
right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face
of overwhelming odds." Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed.
Mendes-Flohr.
Didn't the Zionists legally buy much of the land before Israel was
established?
"In 1948, at the moment that Israel declared itself a state, it
legally owned a little more than 6 percent of the land of Palestine...After
1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land ownership to
specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and
selling) within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was announced in 1947 it included land
held illegally by Jews, which was incorporated as a fait accompli inside the
borders of the Jewish state. And after Israel announced its statehood, an
impressive series of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land
(whose proprietors had become refugees, and were pronounced 'absentee
landlords' in order to expropriate their lands and prevent their return
under any circumstances)." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
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The UN Partition of Palestine
Why did the UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish
and an Arab state?
"By this time [November 1947] the United States had emerged as the
most aggressive proponent of partition...The United States got the General
Assembly to delay a vote 'to gain time to bring certain Latin American
republics into line with its own views.'...Some delegates charged U.S.
officials with 'diplomatic intimidation.' Without 'terrific pressure' from
the United States on 'governments which cannot afford to risk American
reprisals,' said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution 'would never
have passed.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Why was this Truman's position?
"I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands
who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of
thousands of Arabs among my constituents." President Harry Truman, quoted in
"Anti Zionism", ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
"Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of
the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than
10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the
ruling body - a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept
without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations
conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was
established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to
self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the
two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the
United Nations had violated its own charter." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the
1947 partition?
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition
Resolution, large sections of Israel's society - including...Ben-Gurion -
were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed
the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the
UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians."
Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
Public vs private pronouncements on this question.
"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after
we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall
abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine'...In 1948,
Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It
will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of
the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people.
Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of
Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever."
Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
The war begins
"In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from
Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a
general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem's
streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out
war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist
military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the
Arab state." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by the People Press Palestine Book
Project.
Zionists' disrespect of partition boundaries
"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible
intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior
military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab
cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19,
1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New
City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on
May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the
territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution."
British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."
Culpability for escalation of the fighting
"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as
elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the
offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out
successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to
advance through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege
that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into
Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they
overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior
to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention." Sami Hadawi,
"Bitter Harvest."
The Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers
"For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried
out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers 'lined
men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,'...The
ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion
alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight
of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country." Israeli author,
Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
Was Deir Yassin the only act of its kind?
"By 1948, the Jew was not only able to 'defend himself' but to commit
massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the
Israeli army archives, 'in almost every village occupied by us during the
War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes,
such as murders, massacres, and rapes'...Uri Milstein, the authoritative
Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further,
maintaining that 'every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.'" Norman
Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
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Statehood and Expulsion
1948
What was the Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of the
state of Israel?
"The armies of the Arab states entered the war immediately after the
State of Israel was founded in May. Fighting continued, almost all of it
within the territory assigned to the Palestinian state...About 700,000
Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 conflict." Noam Chomsky, "The
Fateful Triangle."
Was the part of Palestine assigned to a Jewish state in mortal danger
from the Arab armies?
"The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send
regular army troops into Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the
sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under the partition plan. But these
regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to
coordinate their efforts...[Jordan's King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis
and the British] that his troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting
force among the Arab armies, would avoid fighting with Jewish
settlements...Yet Western historians record this as the moment when the
young state of Israel fought off "the overwhelming hordes' of five Arab
countries. In reality, the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians
intensified." "Our Roots Are Still Alive," by the Peoples Press Palestine
Book Project.
Ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
"Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund...On
December 19, 1940, he wrote: 'It must be clear that there is no room for
both peoples in this country...The Zionist enterprise so far...has been fine
and good in its own time, and could do with 'land buying' - but this will
not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the
manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there
is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring
countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and
Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe'...There
were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists." Edward Said,
"The Question of Palestine."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader was
able to conceive of future coexistence without a clear physical separation
between the two peoples - achievable only by transfer and expulsion.
Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the
violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a
public pose..Ben Gurion summed up: 'With compulsory transfer we (would) have
a vast area (for settlement)...I support compulsory transfer. I don't see
anything immoral in it,'" Israel historian, Benny Morris, "Righteous
Victims."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the
Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues
and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948]. But no
[general] expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always
refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that
his generals 'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down
in history as the 'great expeller' and he did not want the Israeli
government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy...But while
there was no 'expulsion policy', the July and October [1948] offensives were
characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab
civilians than the first half of the war." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the
Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"
Didn't the Palestinians leave their homes voluntarily during the 1948
war?
"Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the
Palestinian exodus of 1948 was 'self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly
concede that the Arab population fled as a result of Israeli action -
whether directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to
the panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in
Arab population centers throughout Palestine. However, even though the
historical record has been grudgingly set straight, the Israeli
establishment still refused to accept moral or political responsibility for
the refugee problem it - or its predecessors - actively created." Peretz
Kidron, quoted in "Blaming the Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Arab orders to evacuate non-existent
"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) monitored all Middle
Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a
United States monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was
not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine,
from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is
a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the
civilians of Palestine to stay put." Erskine Childers, British researcher,
quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"That Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab
population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only
from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose...most
decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their
inhabitants...even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed
in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the
Declaration of Independence." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of
Israel."
The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of
Palestinians
"During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence
to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of
villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this
aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The
village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers
on 20 April... Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An
Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the
majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or
partly in ruins and uninhabitable." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the
Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
After the fighting was over, why didn't the Palestinians return to
their homes?
"The first UN General Assembly resolution-Number 194- affirming the
right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on
December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times
since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person to
return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere,
Israel has negated the possibility of return... [and] systematically and
juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab
Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as
a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli." Edward Said, "The
Question of Palestine."
Is there any justification for this expropriation of land?
"The fact that the Arabs fled in terror, because of real fear of a
repetition of the 1948 Zionist massacres, is no reason for denying them
their homes, fields and livelihoods. Civilians caught in an area of military
activity generally panic. But they have always been able to return to their
homes when the danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private
rights to property; nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate the homes,
property and personal belongings of the noncombatant civilian population.
The seizure of Arab property by the Israelis was an outrage." Sami Hadawi,
"Bitter Harvest."
How about the negotiations after the 1948-1949 wars?
"[At Lausanne,] Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians were
trying to save by negotiations what they had lost in the war-a Palestinian
state alongside Israel. Israel, however... [preferred] tenuous armistice
agreements to a definite peace that would involve territorial concessions
and the repatriation of even a token number of refugees. The refusal to
recognize the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood proved
over the years to be the main source of the turbulence, violence, and
bloodshed that came to pass." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth Of
Israel."
Israel admitted to UN but then reneged on the conditions under which
it was admitted
"The [Lausanne] conference officially opened on 27 April 1949. On 12
May the [UN's] Palestine Conciliation ,Committee reaped its only success
when it induced the parties to sign a joint protocol on the framework for a
comprehensive peace. . Israel for the first time accepted the principle of
repatriation [of the Arab refugees] and the internationalization of
Jerusalem. . .[but] they did so as a mere exercise in public relations aimed
at strengthening Israel's international image...Walter Eytan, the head of
the Israeli delegation, [stated]..'My main purpose was to begin to undermine
the protocol of 12 May, which we had signed only under duress of our
struggle for admission to the U.N. Refusal to sign would...have immediately
been reported to the Secretary-General and the various governments.'"
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Making of the Arab-Israel Conflict,
1947-1951."
Israeli admission to the U.N.- continued
"The Preamble of this resolution of admission included a safeguarding
clause as follows: 'Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on
partition) and 11 December 1948 (on reparation and compensation), and taking
note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the
Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the
implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly...decides to
admit Israel into membership in the United Nations.'
"Here, it must be observed, is a condition and an undertaking to
implement the resolutions mentioned. There was no question of such
implementation being conditioned on the conclusion of peace on Israeli terms
as the Israelis later claimed to justify their non-compliance." Sami Hadawi,
"Bitter Harvest."
What was the fate of the Palestinians who had now become refugees?
"The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven
hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard...Families huddled in
caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents...Many of the starving were only
miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied
Palestine - the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations
finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration
(UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed
to keep people alive, but only barely." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by The
Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
The 1967 War and the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Did the Egyptians actually start the 1967 war, as Israel originally
claimed?
"The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman,
regarded as a hawk, stated that there was 'no threat of destruction' but
that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so
that Israel could 'exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now
embodies.'...Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: 'In June 1967,
we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai
approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must
be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.'" Noam Chomsky, "The
Fateful Triangle."
Was the 1967 war defenisve? - continued
"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The
Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it
and we knew it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le
Monde, 2/28/68
Moshe Dayan posthumously speaks out on the Golan Heights
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in
1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights
with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz
residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less
for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] 'They didn't even try to
hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area
where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew
in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we
would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians
would get annoyed and shoot.
And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's
how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to
us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997
The history of Israeli expansionism
"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce
Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We
shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of
Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external
factor will be able to limit them." David Ben-Gurion, in 1936, quoted in
Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Expansionism - continued
"The main danger which Israel, as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own
people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated
pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting
from this aim...No zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea
that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical
considerations) on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the
Jewish state." Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, "Jewish History, Jewish
Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
Expansionism - continued
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is
an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows:
"[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with
which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this
end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the
method of provocation-and-revenge...And above all - let us hope for a new
war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles
and acquire our space." Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
But wasn't the occupation of Arab lands necessary to protect Israel's
security?
"Senator [J.William Fulbright] proposed in 1970 that America should
guarantee Israel's security in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed
forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of 1967.
The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby bring
the Soviet Union - then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs -
into compliance. As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights,
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping
force. Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians and the
rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.
"The plan drew favorable editorial support in the United States. The
proposal, however, was flatly rejected by Israel. 'The whole affair
disgusted Fulbright,' writes [his biographer Randall] Woods. 'The Israelis
were not even willing to act in their own self-interest.'" Allan Brownfield
in "Issues of the American Council for Judaism." Fall 1997.[Ed.-This was one
of many such proposals]
What happened after the 1967 war ended?
"In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52
percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for
military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982,
Israel's military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West
Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without
trial for various periods by Israeli security forces. "Intifada: The
Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation," ed. Lockman and Beinin.
World opinion on the legality of Israeli control of the West Bank and
Gaza.
"Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from
war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to
Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel's
action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was
not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel's occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a 'serious
and increasing threat to international peace and security.' " John Quigley,
"Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Examples of the effects of Israeli occupation
"A study of students at Bethlehem University reported by the
Coordinating Committee of International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many
families frequently go five days a week without running water...The study
goes further to report that, 'water quotas restrict usage by Palestinians
living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli settlers have almost
unlimited amounts.'
"A summer trip to a Jewish settlement on the edge of the Judean desert
less than five miles from Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us.
While Bethlehemites were buying water from tank trucks at highly inflated
rates, the lawns were green in the settlement. Sprinklers were going at mid
day in the hot August sunshine. Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor
pool added to the unreality." Betty Jane Bailey, in "The Link", December
1996.
Israeli occupation - continued
"You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or
more have experienced - some many, many times - the [Israeli] army breaking
into the home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten
themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these things
happen to siblings and neighbors...The emotional aspect of the child is
affected by the [lack of] security. He needs to feel safe. We see the
consequences later if he does not. In our research, we have found that
children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their
behaviors and, later, in their political beliefs." Dr Samir Quota, director
of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in "The
Journal of Palestine Studies," Summer 1996, p.84
Israeli occupation - continued
"There is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to a
35-year-old [Palestinian] man who worked fifteen years as an illegal day
laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house for his family
only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house
and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I
asked why this was done - the land, after all, was his - I was told that a
paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stated that he had
built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people
required to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own
property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is apartheid." Edward
Said, in "The Nation", May 4, 1998.
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a
direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the
existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this
obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there.
It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition
is found in the convention's Article 49, which states, 'The occupying Power
shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to
Justice."
Excerpts from the U.S. State Department's reports during the Intifada
"Following are some excerpts from the U.S. State Department's Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices from 1988 to 1991:
1988: 'Many avoidable deaths and injuries' were caused because Israeli
soldiers frequently used gunfire in situations that did not present mortal
danger to troops...IDF troops used clubs to break limbs and beat
Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting
arrest..At least thirteen Palestinians have been reported to have died from
beatings...'
1989: Human rights groups charged that the plainclothes security
personnel acted as death squads who killed Palestinian activists without
warning, after they had surrendered, or after they had been subdued...
1991: [The report] added that the human rights groups had published
'detailed credible reports of torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian
detainees in prisons and detention centers." Former Congressman Paul
Findley, "Deliberate Deceptions."
Jerusalem - Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel?
"Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points
out that the current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War.
Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command Chief Rehavan
Ze'evi. The line he drew 'took in not only the five square kilometers of
Arab East Jerusalem - but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open
country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to
Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel's eternal and indivisible
capital.'" Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs,
May 2000.
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Addendum by If Americans Knew:
1973 War (Known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War)*
Egypt and Syria continued to demand the return of the land taken by
Israel in 1967. However, attempts at diplomacy failed, and eventually
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat warned that war would come if Israel did not
return Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights. But Kissinger and
the Israelis dismissed him, as did the US media.
These were strategic errors and they contributed directly to the war
that broke out on 6 October 1973 with coordinated attacks by Egypt and Syria
against Israeli troops stationed on occupied territory. No fighting actually
took place on Israeli territory, but the shock of the attacks often made it
seem in the US media that Israel itself was under siege.
Israel had considered its position unassailable, but a brilliant
strategy known as "Operation Badr" resulted in a stunning success. Egyptian
planners had feared that the attack might cost as many as 30,000 casualties,
but at the end of October 6, Egyptian losses were only 208 dead. As military
historian Trevor N. Dupuy summed up: "The combination of thorough and
efficient planning, careful security, the achievement of complete surprise,
and the highly efficient execution of carefully prepared plans, resulted in
one of the most memorable water crossings in the annals of warfare. As with
the planning, no other army could have done better."
Demands instantly arose for a massive supply effort by the United
States to Israel. President Nixon at the time already was deeply involved in
the spreading watergate scandal and much of the pressure from the Israeli
lobby focused on Kissinger.
By 12 October, Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz bluntly warned
Kissinger that "if a massive American airlift to Israel does not start
immediately then I'll know that the United States is reneging on its
promises and its policy, and we will have to draw very serious conclusions
from all this." Kissinger's biographers, Bernard and Marvin Kalb, observed
of this remark: "Dinitz did not have to translate his message. Kissinger
quickly understood that the Israelis would soon 'go public' and that an
upsurge of pro-Israeli sentiment could have a disastrous impact upon an
already weakened administration.
That same day, US oilmen sent a joint memorandum to Prresident Nixon
expressing their alarm at the dangerous possibility of steep oil production
cuts and price rises if the US continued its protective policies toward
Israel. Nonetheless, Nixon and Kissinger ignored the warning and openly
launched a huge air operation to supply Israel on 13 October.
When on 18 October Nixon attempted to appease Israel's clamoring
supporters even further by requesting from Congress $2.2 billion in
emergency aid for Israel, Saudi Arabia and other oil producing states
finally imposed a total oil boycott agasint the United States in retaliation
for its unlimited support of Israel. Kissinger estimated that the direct
costs to the United States were $3 billion and the indirect costs, mainly
from higher prices of oil, $10 billion to $15 billion. He added: "It
increased our unemployment and conributed to the deepest recession we have
had in the post war period."
This was a high price to pay for a country that was supposed to
enhance US interests.
* From FALLEN PILLARS: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since
1945 and WARRIORS AGAINST ISRAEL: How Israel Won the Battle to Become
America's Ally 1973, both by Donald Neff.
Donald Neff, author of five books about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, was a Middle East correspondent for the Los Angeles Times before
becoming Jerusalem Bureau Chief and Senior Editor for Time magazine. His
book Warriors at Suez, the first of his Warriors trilogy on America's
relations with the Middle East and Israel, was nominated for the American
Book Award in 1981 in the history category and was an alternate selection of
both the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club.
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The History of Terrorism in the Region
Editor's Note: We believe that the killing of innocent people is
wrong, in all cases. Thus, we cannot condone the use of terrorism by some
extreme Palestinian groups, especially prevalent during the 1970s. That
being said, however, it is necessary to examine the context in which such
incidents occurred.
We hear lots about Palestinian terrorism. How about the Israeli
record?
"The record of Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the
state - indeed, long before - including the massacre of 250 civilians and
brutal expulsion of seventy thousand others from Lydda and Ramle in July
1948; the massacre of hundreds of others at the undefended village of
Doueimah near Hebron in October 1948;...the slaughters in Quibya, Kafr
Kassem, and a string of other assassinated villages; the expulsion of
thousands of Bedouins from the demilitarized zones shortly after the 1948
war and thousands more from northeastern Sinai in the early 1970's, their
villages destroyed, to open the region for Jewish settlement; and on, and
on." Noam Chomsky, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Terrorism - continued
"However much one laments and even wishes somehow to atone for the
loss of life and suffering visited upon innocents because of Palestinian
violence, there is still the need, I think, also to say that no national
movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to
disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.
The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism)
seems to be to try to kill anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish
fatality. The devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools,
mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations, house
destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West Bank and
Gaza..these, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material
loss, the physical, political and psychological deprivations, have
tremendously exceeded the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis." Edward
Said, "The Question of Palestine."
The U.S. Government and media bias on terrorism in the Middle East
"It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel's
history, its record - from the fact that it..is a state built on conquest,
that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to
the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian
territory against international law - is simply never cited, never subjected
to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse...never addressed as
playing any role at all in provoking 'Islamic terror.'" Edward Said in "The
Progressive." May 30, 1996.
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Jewish Criticism of Zionism
"Albert Einstein - 'I should much rather see reasonable agreement with
the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a
Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the
essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State,with borders,
an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid
of the inner damage Judaism will sustain'...
"Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, [stated]...'In
general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses
his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de
facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than
the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by
confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the land on
which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of
the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations
would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two
thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse...I believe that,
politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the
unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the
Arabs - not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete
moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine'...
"Nathan Chofshi - 'Only an internal revolution can have the power to
heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It is
bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in
our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab
refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from
afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest;
the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose
cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer,
while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book" and the "light
of the nations"'...
"In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978,
Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: 'The 12th
principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the
Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism
is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish
people as a nationalistic entity. The Zionists say, in effect, 'Look here,
God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don't, we'll just roll
up our sleeves and take ourselves back.' 'The Rabbi continues: 'This, of
course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force
themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.'"
Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Jewish Criticism - continued
"A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is]
not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build
it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good
will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail." Rabbi
Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
quoted in "Like All The Nations?", ed. Brinner & Rischin.
Martin Buber on what Zionism should have been
"The first fact is that at the time when we entered into an alliance
(an alliance, I admit, that was not well defined) with a European state and
we provided that state with a claim to rule over Palestine, we made no
attempt to reach an agreement with the Arabs of this land regarding the
basis and conditions for the continuation of Jewish settlement.
This negative approach caused those Arabs who thought about and were
concerned about the future of their people to see us increasingly not as a
group which desired to live in cooperation with their people but as
something in the nature of uninvited guests and agents of foreign interests
(at the time I explicitly pointed out this fact).
"The second fact is that we took hold of the key economic positions in
the country without compensating the Arab population, that is to say without
allowing their capital and their labor a share in our economic activity.
Paying the large landowners for purchases made or paying compensation to
tenants on the land is not the same as compensating a people. As a result,
many of the more thoughtful Arabs viewed the advance of Jewish settlement as
a kind of plot designed to dispossess future generations of their people of
the land necessary for their existence and development. Only by means of a
comprehensive and vigorous economic policy aimed at organizing and
developing common interests would it have been possible to contend with this
view and its inevitable consequences. This we did not do.
"The third fact is that when a possibility arose that the Mandate
would soon be terminated, not only did we not propose to the Arab population
of the country that a joint Jewish Arab administration be set up in its
place, we went ahead and demanded rule over the whole country (the Biltmore
program) as a fitting political sequel to the gains we had already made. By
this step, we with our own hands provided our enemies in the Arab camp with
aid and comfort of the most valuable sort - the support of public opinion -
without which the military attack launched against us would not have been
possible. For it now appears to the Arab populace that in carrying on the
activities we have been engaged in for years, in acquiring land and in
working and developing the land, we were systematically laying the ground
work for gaining control of the whole country." Martin Buber, quoted in "A
Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr
Israel's new historians now refute myths of the founding of the state
"Since the 1980's,.....Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their
Palestinian counterparts that Zionism was...carried out as a pure
colonialist act against the local population: a mixture of exploitation and
expropriation...
"They were motivated to present a revisionist point of view to a large
extent by the declassification of relevant archival material in Israel,
Britain and the United States. [For example,]...
Challenging the Myth of Annihilation - The new historiographical
picture is a fundamental challenge to the official history that says the
Jewish community faced possible annihilation on the eve of the 1948 war.
Archival documents expose a fragmented Arab world wrought by dismay and
confusion and a Palestinian community that possessed no military ability
with which to frighten the Jews...
Israel's responsibility for Refugees - The Jewish military advantage
was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the
Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions,
expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some
cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the
case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa'sa, Ein Zietun and other places.
Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation [of
Palestinian land and property]...
The Myth of Arab Intransigence - [The U.N.] convened a peace
conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the
conference, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution that in effect
replaced the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution,
Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte's
triangular basis for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all
the refugees to their homes, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the
partitioning of Palestine into two states. This time, several Arab states
and various representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for
negotiations, as did the United States, which was running the show at
Lausanne...Prime Minister David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace
negotiations along these lines...The only reason he was willing to allow
Israel to participate in the peace conference was his fear of an angry
American reaction...The road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not
Arab, intransigence.
Conclusions - The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what their
research reveals as past evils...There was a high price exacted in creating
a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight of whom
still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine." Israeli historian, Ilan
Pappe in "The Link", January, 1998.
"It is no longer my country"
"For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I can't
bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the
Beduins. All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off
the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their
own...I can't do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole
lot go to hell without me." Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka
Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement periodical, "The Other Israel",
August 1998.
The effect of Zionism on American Jews.
"The corruption of Judaism, as a religion of universal values, through
its politicization by Zionism and by the replacement of dedication to Israel
for dedication to God and the moral law, is what has alienated so many young
Americans who, searching for spiritual meaning in life, have found little in
the organized Jewish community." Allan Brownfield, "Issues of the American
Council for Judaism", Spring 1997.
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Zionism and the Holocaust
The U.N. decisions to partition Palestine and then to grant admission
to the state of Israel were made, on one level, as an emotional response to
the horrors of the Holocaust, Under more normal circumstances, the
compelling claims to sovereignty of the Arab majority would have prevailed.
This reaction of guilt on the part of the Western allies was understandable,
but that doesn't mean the Palestinians should have to pay for crimes
committed by others-a classic example of two wrongs not making a right.
The Holocaust is often used as the final argument in favor of Zionism,
but is this connection justified? There are several aspects to consider in
answering that question honestly. First, we will examine the historical
record of what the Zionist movement actually did to help save European Jewry
from the Nazis.
Shamir proposes an alliance with the Nazis
"As late as 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose leaders,
Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of Israel, approached
the Nazis, using the name of its parent organization, the Irgun(NMO)..[The
proposal stated:] 'The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a
national and totalitarian Pd bound by a treaty with the German Reich would
be in the interests of strengthening the future German nation of power in
the Near East...The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the
war on Germany's side'...The Nazis rejected this proposal for an alliance
because, it is reported, they considered LEHI's military power 'negligible.'
" Allan Brownfield in "The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs",
July/August 1998.
Wasn't the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust?
"In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on
resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization
refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states
would reduce the number available for Palestine." John Quigley, "Palestine
and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency's Executive on
June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do 'is belittle the [Evian]
Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing...We are
particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect
large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could
interfere with our collection efforts'...Ben-Gurion's statement at the same
meeting: 'No rationalization can turn the conference from a harmful to a
useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as
possible.'" Israeli author Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"[Ben-Gurion stated] 'If I knew that it was possible to save all the
children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them
by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second - because we
face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning
of the Jewish people.' In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion
commented that 'the human conscience' might bring various countries to open
their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and
warned: 'Zionism is in danger.'" Israeli historian, Tom Segev, "The Seventh
Million."
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"Even David Ben-Gurion's sympathetic biographer acknowledges that
Ben-Gurion did nothing practical for rescue, devoting his energies to
post-war prospects. He delegated rescue work to Yitzak Gruenbaum, who
[stated]...'They will say that I am anti-Semitic, that I don't want to save
the Exile, that I don't have a varm Yiddish hartz...Let them say what they
want. I will not demand that the Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or
100,000 pounds sterling to help European Jewry. And I think that whoever
demands such things is performing an anti-Zionist act.'
"Zionists in America...took the same position. At a May 1943 meeting
of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, Nahum Goldmann
argued, 'If a drive is opened against the White Paper (the British policy of
restricting Jewish immigrants to Palestine) the mass meetings of protest
against the murder of European Jewry will have to be dropped. We do not have
sufficient manpower for both campaigns.'" Peter Novick, "The Holocaust in
American Life."
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"The Zionist movement...interfered with and hindered other
organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, whenever it imagined that their
activity, political or humanitarian, was at variance with Zionist aims or in
competition with them, even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when
it was a question of life and death...Beit Zvi documents the Zionist
leadership's indifference to saving Jews from the Nazi menace except in
cases in which the Jews could be brought to Palestine...[e.g.] the readiness
of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, to absorb one
hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of this idea - as well as
others, like proposals to settle the Jews inAlaska and the Philippines - by
the Zionist movement...
"The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European
Jewry did not prevent it, of course, from later hurling accusations against
the whole world for its indifference toward the Jewish catastrophe or from
pressing material, political, and moral demands on the world because of that
indifference." Israeli author Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"I have already gone exhaustively into the reason for our being here,
reasons that I as a pioneer of 1906 can affirm have nothing to do with the
Nazis!...We are here because the land is ours. And we are here because we
have again made it ours in this time with the work we have put into it.
Nazism and our history of martyrdom abroad do not concern our presence in
Israel directly." David Ben-Gurion, "Memoirs."
In hindsight, it is easy to say that the millions of Jews who were
murdered in the Holocaust could have been saved if Palestine had been
available for unlimited immigration. The history of this period is not so
simple, however. First, keep in mind that other realistic resettlement plans
were proposed but actively opposed by the Zionist movement. Second, the
great majority of Jews in Europe were not Zionists and did not try to
emigrate to Palestine before 1939. Third, after the start of the war, as the
Nazis occupied various countries, they refused to let the Jews leave, making
emigration virtually impossible. And Palestine, as we have shown, was
already occupied; the indigenous Arabs had more valid reasons than any other
country for wanting to limit Jewish immigration. Read on:
Emigration to Palestine before World War II
"In 1936, the Social Democratic Bund won a sweeping victory in Jewish
kehilla elections in Poland...Its main hallmarks included 'an unyielding
hostility to Zionism' and to the Zionist enterprise of Jewish emigration
from Poland to Palestine. The Bund wished Polish Jews to fight anti-semitism
in Poland by remaining there...The Zionist goal was also opposed, as a
matter of principle, by all the major parties and movements among pre-1939
Polish Jewry..."Elsewhere in eastern Europe...Zionist strength was weaker
still." Prof. William Rubinstein, "The Myth of Rescue."
Emigration to Palestine before World War II - continued
"In fact, Zionism suffered its own defeat in the Holocaust; as a
movement, it failed. It had not, after all, persuaded the majority of Jews
to leave Europe for Palestine while it was still possible to do so." Israeli
historian, Tom Segev, "The Seventh Million."
Emigration during World War II
"[With the start of the war, Nazi] edicts forbidding emigration
followed in all countries under direct Nazi control: after 1940-1 it was in
effect impossible for Jews legally to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Europe to
places of safety...The doors...were firmly shut: by the Nazis, it must be
emphasized." Prof William D. Rubinstein, "The Myth of Rescue.
Palestine was not necessarily a safe haven either
"In September 1940, the Italians, at war with Britain, bombed downtown
Tel Aviv, with over a hundred casualties...As the German Army overran Europe
and North Africa, it appeared possible that it would conquer Palestine as
well. In the summer of 1940, in the spring of 1941, and again in the fall of
1942 the danger seemed imminent. The yishuv panicked...Many people tried to
find a way out of the country, but it was not easy...Some...were taking no
chances; they carried cyanide capsules." Israeli historian, Tom Segev, "The
Seventh Million."
In any case, Palestine was not Britain's to give away; it was already
occupied.
"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we
are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here...Jewish villages
were built in the place of Arab villages...There is not a single community
in the country that did not have a former Arab population." Israeli leader,
Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's "Original Sins."
Already occupied, continued
"One can imagine an argument for the right of a persecuted minority to
find refuge in another country able to accommodate it; one is hard-pressed,
however, to imagine an argument for the right of a peaceful minority to
politically and perhaps physically displace the indigenous population of
another country. Yet...the latter was the actual intention of the Zionist
movement." Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine
Conflict."
The use of the Holocaust for political gain
"[In 1947] the U.N. appointed a special body, the United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to make the decision over Palestine
and UNSCOP members were asked to visit the camps of Holocaust survivors.
Many of these survivors wanted to emigrate to the United States, a wish that
undermined the Zionist claims that the fate of European Jewry was connected
to that of the Jewish community in Palestine. When UNSCOP representatives
arrived at the camps, they were unaware that backstage manipulations were
limiting their contacts solely to survivors who wished to emigrate to
Palestine," Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link," January March 1998.
Political gain - continued
"Inside the DP camps, emissaries from the Yishuv organized survivor
activity - crucially, the testimony the DPs gave to the Anglo-American
Committee of Inquiry and the UN Special Committee on Palestine about where
they wished to go...The Jewish Agency envoys reported home that they had
been successful in preventing the appearance of 'undesirable' witnesses at
the hearings. One wrote his girlfiend in Palestine that 'we have to change
our style and handwriting constantly so that they will think that the
questionaires were filled in by the refugees.'" Peter Novick, "The Holocaust
in American Life."
Roosevelt's advisor writes on why Jewish refugees were not offered
sanctuary in the U.S. after WWII
"What if Canada, Australia, South America, England and the United
States were all to open a door to some migration? Even today [written in
1947] it is my judgement, and I have been in Germany since the war, that
only a minority of the Jewish DP's [displaced persons] would choose
Palestine...
"[Roosevelt] proposed a world budget for the easy migration of the
500,000 beaten people of Europe. Each nation should open its doors for some
thousands of refugees...So he suggested that during my trips for him to
England during the war I sound out in a general, unofficial manner the
leaders of British public opinion, in and out of the government...The simple
answer: Great Britain will match the United States, man for man, in
admissions from Europe...It seemed all settled. With the rest of the world
probably ready to give haven to 200,000, there was a sound reason for the
President to press Congress to take in at least 150,000 immigrants after the
war...
"It would free us from the hypocrisy of closing our own doors while
making sanctimonious demands on the Arabs...But it did not work out...The
failure of the leading Jewish organizations to support with zeal this
immigration programme may have caused the President not to push forward with
it at that time...
"I talked to many people active in Jewish organizations. I suggested
the plan...I was amazed and even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders
decried, sneered, and then attacked me as if I were a traitor...I think I
know the reason for much of the opposition. There is a deep, genuine, often
fanatical emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement
[Zionism]. Men like Ben Hecht are little concerned about human blood if it
is not their own." Jewish attorney and friend of President Roosevelt, Morris
Ernst, "So Far, So Good."
Victimology
"Jewish proponents of the 'victim' card are aware not only of its
social effectiveness but of its usefulness as a means of insuring Jewish
solidarity and, hence, survival. If we were forever hated by all and are
doomed to be forever hated by all, then we'd best stick together and make
the best of it...Personally, I have never found this view of the
eternally-hating gentile to have any resemblance with reality. It seems a
myth, pure and simple, and an ugly one at that.
"Is it a good means of social control? Perhaps, but at what cost? It
strips the faith and history of Jew and gentile alike of all but their
months of antagonism. It wallows in evil imagery and postulates a forever
morally superior Jew, victimized by the forever morally inferior 'goy'..I
have spent most of my adult life among Hasidic Jews, almost all of whom were
Holocaust survivors, and I've heard almost nothing of the of the relentless
harping on victimology and our need to forever memorialize
it...(Victimology) allows Jews to bypass their own faith and offers the
national allegiance of Holocaust/Israel in its place." Rabbi Mayer Schiller,
quoted in "Issues of the American Council for Judaism," Summer 1998.
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General Considerations
Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbor states but has
steadfastly refused to negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last
few years. Why?
"My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine',
you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and
not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land.
You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have
lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a
right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country,
your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what
are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland, as they claim,
you expelled them and you have taken their land." Menahem Begin, quoted in
Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?"
More from the horse's mouth
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would
never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.
Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is
not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and
what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler,
Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here
and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion,
quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president of the
World Jewish Congress.
More from the horse's mouth
"Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and
the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the
generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we
cannot plant a tree and build a home." Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of
Zionism and Israel"
More from the horse's mouth
"The Arabs will be our problem for a long time," Weizmann said, "It's
not going to be simple.One day they may have to leave and let us have the
country. They're ten to one, but don't we Jews have ten times their
intelligence?" Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1919 at the Paris peace
conference, quoted in Ella Winter, "And Not To Yield."
The international consensus on Israel (a very small representative
sampling)
"[In the early 1950s] Arab states regularly complained of the
reprisals to the UN Security Council, which routinely rejected Israel's
claims of self-defense...
"In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, and it used aerial
bombardment to destroy entire camps of Palestinian Arab refugees, By these
means Israel killed 20,000 persons, mostly civilians...Israel claimed
self-defense for its invasion, but the lack of PLO attacks into Israel
during the previous year made that claim dubious...The [UN] Security Council
demanded 'that Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and
unconditionally to the internationally recognized boundaries of Lebanon'...
"The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention's
provision that certain violations of humanitarian law are 'grave breaches'
meriting criminal punishment for perpetrators, found a number of Israel's
practices during the uprising [the intifada] to constitute 'war crimes.' It
included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees and
their subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition of
collective punishment on towns, villages and camps; the administrative
detention of thousands of Palestinians; the expulsion of Palestinian
citizens; the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and
demolition of Palestinian houses." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A
Challenge to Justice."
From the 1970s until the 1999 Israeli High Court decision forbidding
torture during interrogation (theoretically), hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were subjected to inhuman treatment in Israeli prisons.
"Israel's two main interrogation agencies in the occupied territories
engage in a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and torture - according to
internationally recognized definitions of the terms...The methods used in
nearly all interrogations are prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged sight
deprivation using blindfolds or tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged
maintenance of body positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal
threats and insults.
"These methods are almost always combined with some of the following
abuses; confinement in tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to temperature
extremes, such as deliberately overcooled rooms, prolonged toilet and
hygiene deprivation; and degrading treatment...Beatings are far more routine
in IDF interrogations than in GSS interrogations. Sixteen of the nineteen
detainees we interviewed [detained between 1992 and 1994] reported having
been assaulted in the interrogation room. Beatings and kicks were directed
at the throat, testicles, and stomach. Some were repeatedly choked; some had
their heads slammed against the walls...
"Israeli interrogations consistently use methods in combination with
one another, over long periods of time. Thus, a detainee in the custody of
the General Security Service (GSS) may spend weeks during which, except for
brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny chair to which he is painfully
shackled; to a stifling, tiny cubicle in which he can barely move; to
questioning sessions in which he is beaten or violently manhandled; and then
back to the chair.
"The intensive, sustained and combined use of these methods inflicts
the severe mental or physical suffering that is central to internationally
accepted definitions of torture. Israel's political leadership cannot claim
ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centers. The
number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic," 1994 Human
Rights Watch report, "Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel's Interrogation of
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories."
The use of "force' - continued
"Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial, most
Palestinian detainees arrested for 'terrorist' offenses and tortured by the
Shin Bet (General Security Services) 'have been accused of offenses such as
membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They have also
included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for raising
a flag.' On a related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted that there
wasn't a single recorded case in which the Shin Bet's use of torture was
prompted by a 'ticking bomb' scenario: 'In every instance of a Palestinian
lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified its use in
order to extract a confession about something that had already happened, not
about something that was about to happen.'" Norman Finkelstein, "The Rise
and Fall of Palestine."
The 1997 U.N. Commission Against Torture rules against Israel
"B'Tselem estimates that the GSS annually interrogates between
1000-1500 Palestinians [as of 1998]. Some eighty-five percent of them - at
least 850 persons a year - are tortured during interrogation...
"The U.N. Committee Against Torture,..reached an unequivocal
conclusion:...'The methods of interrogation [used in Israeli prisons]...are
in the Committee's view breaches of article 16 and also constitute torture
as defined in article 1 of the Convention...As a State Party to the
Convention Against Torture, Israel is precluded from raising before this
Committee exceptional circumstances'...The prohibition on torture is,
therefore, absolute, and no 'exceptional' circumstances may justify
derogating from it." 1998 Report from B'Teslem, The Israeli Information
Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "Routine Torture:
Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service."
Some arguments used to justify Zionism
"There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for
relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it
lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice
to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization
of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the
need for justification...
[E.g., the inheritance claim] The aim of Zionism is the restoration of
a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not
advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It
does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,]
Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine
3,000 years ago!...
[Jewish suffering as justification] It was easy to make the
Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have
felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical
oppressors of the Jews.
They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow
stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak
and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal
victims for an abstract revenge....
[Anti-semitism as justification] Unlike the situation of Jews
persecuted for being Jews, Israelis are at war with the Arab world because
they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because of their Jewish
identity...
[The law of the jungle justification.] Presenting the world as
naturally unjust, and oppression as nature's way, has always been the first
refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The need to justify
Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli
world view...In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis
have become famous...
[The effect on Israelis]Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is
the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel be
discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews?
This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli
reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments
Israelis; it marks everything and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the
blood and marks every moment of existence." Israeli author, Benjamin
Beit-Hallahami, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and
Israel."
Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine
"Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine was neither historical nor
a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of
non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish
settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic 'mysticism'
of 'blood and soil' and the Romantic 'cult' of 'death, heroes and graves'...
"The claim of Jewish 'homelessness is founded on a cluster of assumptions
that both negates the liberal idea of citizenship and duplicates the
anti-Semitic one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic nation. In a
word, the Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid as the anti-Semitic
case for an ethnic state that marginalizes Jews." Professor Norman
Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict,"
How about the Zionist argument that Jordan already is the Palestinian
state?
"It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier 'territorial
compromise', namely in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised
'national home for the Jewish people,'...a decision that is difficult to
criticize in light of the fact that 'the number of Jews living there
permanently in 1921 has reliably been estimated at two, or according to some
authorities, three persons.'" Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Why doesn't Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East," have a
constitution?
"The abstention from formulating a constitution was no accident. The
massive expropriation of lands and other properties from those Arabs who
fled the country as a result of the War of Independence and of those who
remained but were declared absent, as well as the confiscation of large
tracts of land from Arab villages who did not flee, and the laws passed to
legalize those acts - all this would have necessarily been declared
unconstitutional, null and void, by the Supreme Court, being expressly
discriminatory against one part of the citizenry, whereas a democratic
constitution obliges the state to treat all of its citizens equally."
Israeli author, Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
"The only democracy in the Middle East?" - continued
"The 1989 Israel High Court decision that any political party
advocating full equality between Arab and Jew can be barred from fielding
candidates in an election...[means] that the Israeli state is the state of
the Jews...not their [the Arabs'] state." Professor Norman Finkelstein,
"Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
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Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel
The fundamentalist wing of the Jewish religion, while certainly not
representative of Judaism as a whole, is influential in Israel, and is the
ideological basis of the settler movement in the West Bank and Gaza (except
for "Greater Jerusalem" where many secular Jews have moved because of cheap,
subsidized housing) The following quotes show the racism inherent in this
world-view and why its influence should be opposed by all rational people.
Ideological basis of racism in Israel
"The Talmud states that...two contrary types of souls exist, a
non-Jewish soul comes from the Satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems
from holiness...Rabbi Kook, the Elder, the revered father of the messianic
tendency of Jewish fundamentalism said, "The difference between a Jewish
soul and the souls of non-Jews...is greater and deeper than the difference
between a human soul and the souls of cattle.'" Israel Shahak and Norton
Mezvinsky's "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel"
Racism - continued
"Gush Emunim rabbis have continually reiterated that Jews who killed
Arabs should not be punished, [e.g.]...Relying on the Code of Maimonides and
the Halacha, Rabbi Ariel stated, 'A Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from
human judgement and has not violated the [religious] prohibition of murder'..The
significance here is most striking when the broad support, both direct and
indirect, for Gush Emunim is considered. About one-half of Israel's Jewish
population supports Gush Emunim." Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's
"Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel"
Jewish fundamentalist rationale for seizing Arab land
"They argue that what appears to be confiscation of Arab owned land
for subsequent settlement by Jews is in reality not an act of stealing but
one of sanctification. From their perspective the land is being redeemed by
being transferred from the satanic to the divine sphere...To further this
process, the use of force is permitted whenever necessary...Halacha permits
Jews to rob non-Jews in those locales wherein Jews are stronger than
non-Jews." Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's "Jewish Fundamentalism in
Israel"
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Intifada 2000 and the "Peace Process"
The flaws of the Oslo Accords
"The United States has been a terrible 'sponsor' of the peace process.
It has succumbed to Israeli pressure on everything, abandoning the principle
of land for peace (no U.N. Resolution says anything about returning a tiny
percentage, as opposed to all of the land Israel seized in 1967), pushing
the lifeless Palestinian leadership into deeper and deeper holes to suit
Netanyahu's preposterous demands.
"The fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they
were before the Oslo process began. Their annual income is less than half of
what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place; more of
their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist; and
Jerusalem is practically lost...
"Every house demolishment, every expropriated dunum, every arrest and
torture, every barricade, every closure, every gesture of arrogance and
intended humiliation simply revives the past and reenacts Israel's offenses
against the Palestinian spirit, land, body politic. To speak about peace in
such a context is to try to reconcile the irreconcilable." Edward Said in
"The Progressive", March 1998
The roots of Intifada 2000
"The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end to
the charade begun at Oslo seven years ago and labelled the 'peace process.'
In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of people around the world, were
led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within
five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an
independent state. Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel's
withdrawal and come to an agreement on the status of Jerusalem, the future
of Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.
"Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere
and the Palestinians' hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless
of which government was in power, quibbled over wording, demanded revisions
of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide by the new
agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian
homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing,
and seizing Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway
network built after 1993 on confiscated Palestinian land isolates
Palestinian towns and villages from one another and from Jerusalem, forcing
many Palestinians to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next
town...
"According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians
wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting
Barak's offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed by Clinton,
wanted assurance of Israel's continued strategic control over the West Bank
and Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel retain
permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem, including Haram
Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.
"As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods in
several Palestinian cities, destroying entire city blocks and causing scores
of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns with their guns
turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the Green Line
rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting
"Death of Arabs'...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against
Palestinian stone throwers failed to restrain the Israelis and instead fired
at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs were killed.
"The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by years
of daily abuse and humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September 6, a
group of Israeli border police stopped three Palestinian workers as they
were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all, subjected them to
40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 19
that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their heads against a
stone wall, forced them to swallow their own blood, and cursed their mothers
and sisters. The incident only came to light because the policemen took
photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by the
hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers said such beatings
are a common occurance, but they are seldom reported." Rachelle Marshall,
"The Peace Process Ends in Protests and Blood", Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, December 2000.
"Israel has failed the test"
"In the Oslo Agreements, Israel and the West put Palestinian
leadership to a test: In exchange for an Israeli promise to gradually
dismantle the mechanisms of the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, the Palestinian leadership promised to stop every act of violence and
terror immediately. For that purpose, all the apparatus for security
coordination was created, more and more Palestinian jails were built, and
demonstrators were barred from approaching the [Jewish] settlements.
"The two sides agreed on a period of five years for completion of the
new deployment and the negotiations on a final agreement. The Palestinian
leadership agreed again and again to extend its trial period...From their
perspective, Israel was also put to a test: Was Israel really giving up its
attitude of superiority and domination, built up in order to keep the
Palestinian people under its control?
"More than seven years have gone by and Israel has security and
administrative control of 61.2% of the West Bank and about 20% of the Gaza
Strip and security control over another 26.8% of the West Bank. This control
is what has enabled Israel to double the number of settlers in 10 years..and
to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of
bypass roads meant for Jews only...
"Israel has failed the test. Palestinians control of 12% of the West
Bank does not mean that Israel has given up its attitude of superiority and
domination...The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks is the
natural outcome of seven years of [Israeli] lying and deception." Israeli
journalist Amira Hass, "Israel Has Failed The Test," in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz,
10/18/00.
Jimmy Carter's simple statement of the facts - November 2000
"An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed and
violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue
to 'create facts' by building settlements in occupied territory...
"At Camp David in September 1978...the bilateral provisions led to a
comprehensive and lasting treaty between Egypt and Israel, made possible at
the last minute by Israel's agreement to remove its settlers from the Sinai.
But similar constraints concerning the status of the West Bank and Gaza have
not been honored, and have led to continuing confrontation and violence...
"[Concerning UN Resolution 242] Our government's legal commitment to
support this well-balanced resolution has not changed...It was clear that
Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were a direct violation of
this agreement and were, according to the long-stated American position,
both 'illegal and an obstacle to peace.' Accordingly, Prime Minister Begin
pledged that there would be no establishment of new settlements until after
the final peace negotiations were completed. But later, under Likud
pressure, he declined to honor this commitment...
"It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel
insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that are
supported by the United States and all other nations.
"There are many questions as we contine to seek an end to violence in
the Middle East, but there is no way to escape the vital one: Land or
peace?" Former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November 26,
2000.
Oslo and Intifada 2000 - continued
"After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status
of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed,
including 30 children, often by 'excessive use of lethal force in
circumstances in which neither the lives of security forces nor others were
in immminent danger, resulting in unlawful killings,' Amnesty International
concluded in a detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US.
"Barak's plan...ensure(s) that useable land and resources (primarily
water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered
by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority (PA), playing the role
traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several
varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South Africa's
Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious analagoue...
"It is important to recall that the policies have not only been
proposed, but implemented, with the support of the U.S. That support has
been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic
framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then
pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that
followed, culminating in the 'Oslo process.' Since all of this has been
effectively vetoed from history in the US., it takles a little work to
discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded," Noam
Chomsky, "Al-Aqsa Intifada", October 2000, on Znet, www.lbbs.org/meastwatch.
America - An impartial mediator?
"America's credibility as mediator had long been questioned by
Palestinians, and with reason. 'The Palestinians always complain that we
know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do,' one
Israeli government source told The Independent recently. 'There's good
reason for that: we write them.'" Phil Reeves in "The Independent" (U.K.),
10/9/2000
Lockstep U.S. Media tell (some of) the facts but not the truth
"Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe
that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor, in
the first half of October, was there much media analysis of the fact that
the violence overwhelmingly struck at the Palestinian people.
"Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed by
heavily armed men in uniform - often described by CNN and other news outlets
as 'Israeli security forces'. Under the circumstances, it's a notably
benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors.
"As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard a
single American news account describing them as 'pro democracy
demonstrators.' Yet that would be an appropriate way to refer to people
who - after more than three decades of living under occupation - are in the
streets to demand self determination.
"While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior
firepower, do most of the killing...American news stories highlighted the
specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak as he demanded that
Palestinians end the violence - while uniformed Israelis under his authority
continue to kill them...
"Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I'm apalled by what Israel
is doing with U.S. Tax dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get
along, they diminish the humanity of us all." Norman Solomon, "Media Spin
Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation," from FAIR's Media Beat, October
14, 2000.
Intifada 2000 - An overview
"There is, in the final analysis, only one way to 'stop the violence,'
and that is to end the occupation. The desire for liberation will,
eventually, always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in
hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death
than live in bondage. This is not extreme nation.0 racism or religious
fervor. It is the need to be free...
"[Occupation] means a reality of unending violence. It means being
surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system
indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given
to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities
linked by roads that non-Jewish residents of the West Bank (whose land was
confiscated for these roads) are prohibited from using; home demolitions;
torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down on a regular basis. It
means living in a massive prison...
"Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the
conflict. The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242,
which sets up a two-part 'land for peace' solution. Part one holds that
Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Part two calls
for all states in the region to live in peace and security in those borders.
The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly
unfulfilled." Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab
Anti Discrimination Committee, in the Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2000.
Albright stands the facts on their heads
"With the same deadpan, expressionless, emotionless, glazed look,
Madam Albright repeated: 'Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel
undeer siege,' adding that the Israeli army is defending itself...[But] It
is Israel that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine (and not the other
way around) Israeli tanks and armored vehicles are surrounding Palestinian
villages, camps and cities (and not the other way around). Israeli
(American-made) Apache gunships are firing Lau and other missiles at
Palestinian protestors and homes (and not the other way around). It is
Israel that is confiscating Palestinian land and importing Jewish settlers
to set up illegal armed settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory
(and not the other way around). The settlers on the rampage in the West Bank
and Israelis terrorizing Palestinians in their own homes (and not the other
way around)...Israel is committing atrocities against the Palestinians with
total impunity, and yet you maintain, 'Israel is beseiged.'" Hanan Ashrawi,
in "The Progressive", December 2000
What Arafat was offered
"In American coverage of the recent Camp David meetings, the American
press obediently followed the Israeli and US government spin that while
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made courageous concessions for peace,
Palestinian unwillingness to compromise caused the meeting to fail.
"Never mind that Barak's 'courageous concessions' consisted of
allowing the Palestinians to have joint administrative responsibility over a
couple of remote Arab neighborhoods of Arab East Jerusalem - pathetic crumbs
tossed on the floor which Arafat was expected to gratefully pick up."
American Jewish reporter, Eduardo Cohen, from "What Americans Need to Know -
But Probably Won't Be Told - To understand Palestinian Rage" from Palestine
Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org
What Arafat was offered - continued
"Barak appears to be asking for only 10% of the occupied territories.
In reality, it's closer to 30%, taking into account the territories he wants
to annex in the Jerusalem area and place under his "security control" in the
Jordan Valley. But even worse, in the map submitted to the Palestinians,
these percentage points cut the country up from East to West and from North
to South, so that the Palestinian state will consist of groups of islands,
each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
"World opinion is always on the side of the underdog. In this fight,
we are Goliath and they are David. In the eyes of the world [outside the
US], the Palestinians are fighting a war of liberation against a foreign
occupation. We are in their territory, not they on ours. We are the
occupiers, they are the victims. This is the objective situation, and no
minister of propaganda can change that." Israeli peace activist. Uri Avnery,
"12 Conventional Lies About the Palestine-Israeli Conflict" from Palestine
Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org.
An Israeli's "Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now"
"It has been seven years exactly since I wrote my last letter to
you.It was the day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, when you invited
me to dance with you in Menorah Square...Permit me to quote for you a few
passages from that old letter.
"'You danced in the square because you were happy about this peace.
Not just plain peace, but a blend of peace,security, Palestinian
chest-beating over sins committed (renunciation of terrorism), and
far-reaching concessions by the other side. A peace that you can be proud
of. A peace - so you boast - for which we are giving nothing ("Just a tiny
bit," whispers the prime minister) and gaining much; recognition, greater
security, a halt to the Intifada, renunciation of terrorism, being relieved
of the Arabs and more. You are happy about this peace, and in its honor you
invite me to dance with you. No thank you...You got rid of Gaza, you
separated Israelis from Palestinians, you gave them the dirty work and you
didn't even promise withdrawal or a real state. Could peace possibly be
bought more cheaply?"
"'I, by contrast, see peace as an end and not merely as a means, and
call for getting out of the Occupied Territories because we have nothing to
be there for, even if the occupation did not cost us even one victim or one
cent; and I am against shooting children - and adults - simply because it is
forbidden to shoot children or ordionary civilians.'
"Since the writing of these lines you celebrated the peace and you
became fat and prosperous. The repeated and varied violations of the
agreements did not move you, not to speak of any change in our culture of
war and occupation, the arrogant tone of those negotiating in our name and
their attempts to demand more and more in exchange for less and less...
"What is there to be confused about? A conquering army is using tanks
and helicopter gunships to disperse demonstrations. What is so hard to
understand here?...There is an occupation and there is a struggle against
the occupation. There are demonstrators and there is an army that has
received orders to shed their blood. And don't come to me with the story of
the rifles, Your glorious war record qualifies you to understand that even
CNN reporters understand, that those rifles do not endanger either Israel or
the soldiers if they don't get too close...
"[From 1993 letter]"peace is a tango that takes two equal partners
dancing in unity; it is not a dance of one who drags around his partner at
will...In your dance of peace you have no partners, only enemies. For your
peace is his occupation, your success is his loss...Peace is still far away
because peace demands honesty, because peace demands equality. You want to
force them to lie, you want of them a peace of surrender, you are
celebrating a peace of master and slave. Under such conditions there will
perhaps be peace-and-quiet, but Peace, no. Not until you open your eyes and
your heart. Not until we are ready for a peace of partnership and equality."
Michael (Mikado) Warschawski, "The Party Is Over: An Open Letter to a Friend
In Peace Now,", from Znet, www.lbbs.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
"Barak promised peace and brought war, and not by accident."
"(Barak) promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While
speaking about peace, he enlarged the settlements. Cut the Palestinian
territories into pieces by 'by-pass' roads. Confiscated lands. Demolished
homes. Uprooted trees. Paralyzed the Palestinian economy..Conducted
negotiations in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that
amounts to capitulation. Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting
the Green Line, the Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic
homeland. Demanded the annexation of 'settlement blocs" and pretended that
they amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he meant more than
20% would remain under Israeli control. Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to
accept a 'state' cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several
enclaves isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and
soldiers...Boasts publicly that he has not given back to the Palestinians
one inch of territory...When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot,
in cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults and
children. Blockaded each village and town separately, bringing them to the
verge of starvation, in order to get them to surrender. Bombarded
neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style 'liquidations', causing an
inevitable escalation of the violence." Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery,
February 3, 2001, www.gush-shalom.org
A 'benign' occupation?
"Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running
an 'enlightened' or 'benign' occupation, qualitatively different from other
military occupations the world has seen. The truth was radically different.
Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and
fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily
intimidation, humiliation and manipulation." Israeli historian, Benny
Morris, "Righteous Victims."
What "closure" means
"Just an hour's drive from Jerusalem, a cruel drama has been underway
for the past five months, the likes of which have not been seen since the
early days of the Israeli occupation, but the majority of Israelis are
taking absolutely no interest in it. The iron grip of the closure in its new
format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people, yet no
one is saying a word. . .
"It has to be said starkly and simply: There has never been a closure
like this there, in the land of barriers and closure. In the worst of times
of the previous Intifada, when the iDF was in eveÄr and curfew reigned
supreme, there was not a situation in which a whole people was jailed
without a trial and without the right of appeal.
"Israel has split the West Bank by means of hundreds of trenches, dirt
ramparts and concrete cubes which have been placed at the entrance to most
of the towns and villages. No one enters and no one leaves, not those who
are pregnant and not those who are dying. There isn't even a soldier with
whom one can plead and beg. A network of bizarre Burma roads that break
through the encirclement are sending an entire people along muddy, rocky
routes, with the situation aggravated by a substantial risk of getting
caught or getting shot by soldiers who often open fire on the desperate
travelers. . .
"Never before has there been distress and suffering on this scale
among the Palestinians in the territories. They will engender unprecendented
despair and ultimately they will spark violence more cruel and painful than
anything seen so far. . . This is the point: the horrific distress of the
Palestinians because of the present closure will quickly turn into the
distress of the Israelis. . . The current siege, a shamefully appalling
operation, must be lifted quickly. This must not be made conditional on the
cessation of the violence, because the siege itself is the most effective
spur to violence." Israeli writer, Gideon Levy, in Ha aretz, March 4, 2001
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Views Of The Future
A future free of ethnocentrism
"The first challenge, then, is to extract acknowledgement from Israel
for what it did to us...But then, I believe, we must also hold out the
possibility of some form of coexistence in which a new and better life, free
of ethnocentrism and religious intolerance, could be available...If we
present our claims about the past as ushering in a form of mutuality and
coexistence in the future, a long-term positive echo on the Israeli and
Western side will reverberate." Edward Said in "The Progressive", March 1998
The answer? A sovereign Palestinian state.
"The final destination of a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement has
begun to emerge from the political haze. Such a settlement must...give the
Palestinian people a sovereign, uncontested, independent state of their own.
This is a matter of justice and practicality. If a truly lasting and stable
peace is the goal, there is no other option...The mere trappings of
statehood will not suffice. The state has to be real and workable. The
following are its essential conditions.
Territorial integrity and contiguity...Any further dissection of
Palestinian territory would make it politically and economically impossible
to maintain a state...There can be no civilian pockets under Israeli rule on
Palestinian land...
A sovereign capital in Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is Palestine's
historical, spiritual and commercial heart. To exclude it from a Palestinian
state is unthinkable...
"Justice and fairness for refugees...As a matter of principle, the
Palestinians right to return or be compensated for their lost homes and land
is nonnegotiable...Israel must acknowledge the suffering and hardship
Palestinian refugees have faced as a result of their eviction from their
homeland, and must assist in their rehabilitation and reabsorption." A.S.
Khalidi, Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, February 11, 1997.
Palestinian refugees claim to repatriation is realistic, as well as
just
Palestinian engineer and parliamentarian Salman Abu Sitta...(showed)
that 'the return of the refugees is possible with no appreciable dislocation
of Jewish residents.' This is because '78 percent of the Jewish population
of Israel lives on only 15 percent of the land'...
"Ironically, the land in the upper Galilee from which a very large
percentage of the refugees were driven is so lightly populated because most
of thÝ immigrants [that] settled there refused to remain so far from the
centers of Israeli urban life in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem...Of those
actually cultivating those former Palestinian fields, many are non-Jewish
Thais, Rumanians and others slated to return to their countries at the end
of their contracts." Richard Curtiss from June 2000 issue of "Washington
Report On Middle East Affairs."
Israeli professor calls for a new Zionism
"It was our nationalism...which drew the country into an occupation
and settlement of the West Bank...None of the leaders of the Labor movement
believed that the Palestinians deserved the same right [as Jews] because
none of them believed in universal rights. Pretending, like [Arthur]
Hertzberg and others do, that the Occupation and the colonial situation
created in the last thirty years was merely the product of the Arab refusal
to recognize Israel, is no more than looking for an alibi and falsifying
history...
"The time has come to say that if the settlements in Judea and Samaria
or in the very heart of Hebron are the natural, logical and legitimate
continuation of the original intention of Zionism, then we need another
Zionism. If a 'Jewish State' that does not recognize the absolute equality
of all human beings is considered to be closer to the spirit of the founding
fathers than a new liberal Zionism, then it is time to say good-bye to the
ghosts of the founders, and to start forging for ourselves an identity
detached from the mystical ramifications of our religion and the irrational
side of our history." Israeli professor of political science, Ze'ev
Sternhell, in "Tikkun", May/June 1998.
Sources for further research on Palestine and Israel
These short quotes do not, of course, prove the assertions made here.
The historical evidence, however, is overwhelming and is available in fully
documented form in the books cited. Particularly useful sources are:
1.. Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice by John Quigley,
professor of law at Ohio State University. Duke University Press, 1990.
2.. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The
Palestinians by Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and "arguably the most
important intellectual alive" (NY Times). South End Press, 1983.
3.. Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel
by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. An honest history of Zionism by a noted Israeli
scholar who teaches at Haifa University. Olive Branch Press, 1993.
4.. Bitter Harvest by Sami Hadawi. A very complete look at the
documentary evidence of the creation of the state of Israel, by a
Palestinian Christian who lived through that period. Caravan Books 1979.
For articles from the alternative and Israeli press, please see ZNet
at www.lbbs.org and www.commondreams.org/viewsarchive.htm.
A wealth of information on Palestine/Israel is to be found at
www.geocities.com:0080/CapitolHill/Senate/7891.
Another very useful resource is the Jewish Voice for Peace. To join
their mailing list, e-mail ***@socrates.Berkeley.edu.
Also, the American Educational Trust, publisher of Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs(a great magazine) has a large selection of books
available. Write for their free catalog to AET, PO Box 53062, Washington, DC
20009.
This booklet can also be found on the web at www.cactus48.com
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Conclusion I
For Jewish Readers
As we have seen, the root cause of the Palestine-Israel conflict is
clear. During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were
actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned into refugees.
The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either
destroyed their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards,
houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish
population. This was the birth of the state of Israel.
We know it is hard to accept emotionally, but in this case the Jewish
people are in the wrong.We took most of Palestine by force from the Arabs
and blamed the victims for resisting their dispossession. If you run into
someone's car, for whatever reason, simple justice demands that you repair
it. Our moral obligation to the Palestinian people is no less clear. It is
time for all Jewish people of good conscience to make whatever amends are
possible to the Palestinians in order to live up to the best part of the
Jewish tradition - its ethical and moral basis.
Any criticism of Israel is traditionally seen by American Jews as
harmful to the Jewish people, even if the criticism is true. But "my people,
right or wrong, my people" is no different than "my country, right or wrong,
my country". Once we start down the slippery slope where the ends justify
the means we have left behind any claim to morality. Along with millions of
other American Jews unaffiliated with the major U.S. Jewish organizations,
we are outraged at the Israeli government's ongoing oppression of the
Palestinians and feel that it has been the ruination of the high moral
standing of the Jewish people.
The Israeli government could solve the Palestine/Israel crisis
tomorrow. It actually would be in the best interests of its citizens to do
so because random acts of terrorism against Israelis would cease if
Palestinian demands for a viable, independent state were accepted and
compensation for Arab losses made.
Here in America, we Jews are thoroughly assimilated into the
mainstream of society and hold positions of power and influence in every
field of endeavor. We do not need to be in a defensive mood anymore. We can
afford to change out attitude from "is it good the the Jews?" to "Is it
good?" At the very least, American Jews need to categorically state that we
cannot condone Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the
intentional murder and crippling of Palestinian protestors armed only with
rocks, as documented in reports by the UN Security Council, the UN Human
Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli groups
like B'Tselem, etc.
According to a survey commissioned by the five largest American Jewish
organizations, but suppressed by them afterwards, 20% of American Jews
support Palestinian demands and 35% say that Jerusalem should be shared.
This, in the face of a near-total blackout of the Palestinian position in
our press, is very impressive. Join this growing segment of American Jews by
contacting Not In My Name, at www.nimn.org, a group that is spearheading a
coalition of Jewish groups to protest the Israeli occupation.
Israel's long-term interests can best be served by supporting Israeli
peace groups, like Gush Shalom (www.gush.shalom.org), not the Israeli
government and its brutal repression, which just leads to endless violence.
Israeli peace groups rightfully criticize their government and we should
too, since they claim to act in our name. American groups like the Jewish
Peace Lobby, Jewish Voice For Peace and the Middle East Children's Alliance
also deserve your support. Don't compromise yout ethics in blind support of
bad politics-work for a just soultion instead.
Please write for more free copies of this booklet to the address on
the back page and ask your Jewish friends to consider the information
presented here. For everyone's sake. Peace.
Important Note: at the end of the next section, Conclusion II, there
is a list of Jewish organizations in America and Israel, and links to their
websites, which are informative and interesting. We encourage to explore
them with an open mind.
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Conclusion II
We hope that this look at the historical record concerning the root
cause of the Middle East conflict will give second thoughts to all who have
previously supported Israel's actions.
The persecution of the Jews for centuries in Europe was the worst of
many stains on the European record, and the Zionists' desire for a place of
sanctuary is certainly understandable. Like all other colonial enterprises,
however, Zionism was based on the total disregard of the rights of
indigenous inhabitants. As such, it is morally indefensible. And, as
previously stated, all subsequent crimes - and there have been many on both
sides - inevitably follow from this original injustice to the Palestinians.
Given the damage that has been done to the Palestinian people, Israel's
obligation is to make whatever amends possible. Among these should be
assisting the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in the entire West
Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel should not object
to this state and, in addition, should help with its foundation via generous
reparations. Besides being the right thing to do, this would stop the
sporadic acts of violence against Israel, as the Palestinians' legitimate
desire for their own state would be realized. Moreover, all laws that
discriminate against non-Jews living in Israel should be repealed.
Given the history outlined in this paper, we conclude that the
Palestinians have gotten "the short end of the stick" and that justice
demands that wrongs should be righted. Full and complete justice would
entail allowing any Palestinian to return to Israel if they wished but,
practically speaking, we understand that this is a recipe for even more
bloodshed. Therefore, recognizing that reality, we join Gush Shalom and
other Israeli peace groups in calling for a negotiated, modified right of
return with the bulk of Palestinian refugees being settled in a Palestinian
state, financed by generous reparations from both Israel and the
international community.
As U.S. citizens, we have a special obligation to see that justice is
done in this matter. U.S. financial aid to Israel has been, and continues to
be, enormous; and our diplomatic support is the crucial factor allowing
Israel's continued occupation of Arab territories. We strongly recommend
that you contact your elected representatives in Washington and urge them to
insist that, as a preconditon of continued support, Israel must abide by the
consensus of world opinion and withdraw to its 1967 borders, as demanded in
numerous UN votes.
American Jews in particular have a special responsibility to
acknowledge the Palestinian point of view in order to help move the debate
forward. As Chomsky writes in his Peace in the Middle East?, "In the
American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that
the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice,
whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is recognized,
discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin."
In the long run, only by admitting their culpability and making amends
can Israelis live with their neighbors in peace. Only then can the
centuries-old Jewish tradition of being a people of high moral character be
restored. And only in this way can real security, peace and justice come to
this ancient land.
Thank you for taking the time to read
"The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict"
Compiled, Edited, and Published by
Jews for Justice in The Middle East
P.O. Box 14561
Berkeley CA 94712
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If Americans Knew
Post by Bush the LiarPost by GO Mavsanti semites...
Palestine has never existed . . . as an autonomous entity. There is no
language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture.
There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.
Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent
invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands.
Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the land mass. But that's too
much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the
fighting in Israel is about today . . . No matter how many land concessions
the Israelis make, it will never be enough.
Here is some food for thought.. Do you see civilians dying in Jordan or
Egypt? NO .. Why? Because they both finally recognized the right of Israel
to exist and signed peace treaties with it.
If Lebanese were not supporting Hezbollah and other entities whose stated
goal is destruction of Israel, there would be no civilian causalities in
Lebanon.
You call this justification for the stealing of Palestinian land? Why
doesn't Israel obey the UN resolutions? Palestinians have never broken
any UN resolutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_concerning_Israel
Take your bullshit jew lies and shove em up your ass.
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