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Shattering the Myth |
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SHATTERING THE MYTH: For
further information email: msamcgill@hotmail.com
An ‘impartial’
analysis of a very ‘partially’ presented issue
It is often claimed that the nature of the conflict in Palestine is a
very “complex issue”, that the Arabs and Palestinians are engaging in a
“gross oversimplification” in order to win world sympathy, furthermore it is
claimed that the Arabs are assisted in this nefarious plan by the
‘anti-Israeli’ press. It is claimed that Israel is a ‘peaceful state’
which is occasionally forced to employ force in order to ‘defend’ itself
from ruthless terrorists. The west is believed to be ‘hypocritical’ if it
dares to criticize Israel, because it would itself react in a similar manner if
faced with such threats to its ‘security’. Israel is portrayed as the
‘only side which wants peace’ and as a righteous party caught in a difficult
position. However, it is claimed, it becomes difficult for it to do anything
when the other side is never willing to discuss issues in a ‘reasonable’
manner. And then (you guessed it!) there is the ever present specter of
‘anti-Semitism’ (a word that is supposed to stop everyone in their tracks
and immediately condemn the party it is applied to, even if the condemned is a
full blooded Semite, or a two year old or whatever…). Many are of the opinion
that there are two sides to every story and that the only way to reach a
conclusion is to grant that ‘both sides have a valid point.’ It is
interesting how, a little more than half a century after Nazi Germany was
defeated, people are again claiming that such accommodation be shown to another
state which follows a similarly racist policy. Unfortunately, people do not seem
to learn well from history. The information presented in the following panels
examines the claims that are often advanced in favor of the Zionist State of Israel. It exposes this
propaganda for the mythology that it is by contrasting it with the facts and the
statements of several prominent figures in the conflict, many of them Zionists.
This is done in the hope that the best (or perhaps ‘impartial’) evidence
often comes from the horse’s mouth…
CREATION OF ISRAEL AND THE
STATUS OF ITS CLAIMS TO LEGITIMACY
1. Do the Jewish
people have a historic claim to the land of Palestine/Israel which has greater
legitimacy than other claims? Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 BC, the land of
Canaan was occupied by Canaanites. “Between 3000 and 1100 BC,
Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and
much of Syria and Jordan... Those would remain in the Jerusalem hills after the
Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century AD] 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 Furthermore,
the Present-day Palestinians’ ancestral
heritage: “But all these [different peoples who had come into Canaan] were
additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree ... And that parent tree was Canaanite
... [the Arab invaders of the 7th century AD] made Moslem
converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried
with them, with the result that all are now
so completely Arabised that we cannot tell where Canaanites leave off and the
Arabs begin.” Ilene
Beatty, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan. Neither was the rule on this area any more than one of many periods. 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
BC to the wiping out of Juda in 586 BC, we arrive at [only] a 414-year Jewish
rule.” Ilene Beatty, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan. Does
this really imply that they have an absolute claim to this land? “Thus, if post-1967 claims matter, why not pre-1947? If
post-Balfour claims, why not pre-Ottoman? If pre-Massada, why not pre-Moses? If
post-Abraham, why not pre-Semite? Continuing in this vein, we would eventually
end up in some Stone Age, and then who would inherit the earth?” Alfred
M. Lilienthal, “The Zionist Connection”, Pg.9.
What about the Balfour declaration which promised the Jews a homeland in
Palestine? The
Balfour declaration was made 1917. It was a decision made by a European power
about non-European territory. It promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine on
the condition that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of the existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine…”
As
to how well the British kept this promise, Lord Balfour himself writes in
1919: “The
contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is
even more flagrant in the case of the
independent nation of Palestine (yes it was recognized even then!) 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, though the American [King-Crane] Commission has
been going through the form of asking what they are. The
four great 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 desires and prejudices of the 700,000
Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.” And what of the attitude of the great
democracies? Well, who better than Winston Churchill to clarify their position.
Churchill
said: “I do not agree that the dog in
the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there
for a very long time…I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these
people by the fact that a stronger race,
a higher grade race, or at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it
that way, has come in and taken their
place.” Or perhaps Truman would present a more
enlightened view: “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”) So
what did the Zionists intend to do with the native population? In 1895, Theodor Herzl
noted in his diaries: “We shall have to
spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment
for it in the transit countries, while denying
it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and
the removal of the poor must be carried
out discreetly and circumspectly.” Theodor
Herzl, Complete Diaries, VoII., Pg.88, ed.Raphael Patai,trans. Harry Zohn, New
York: Herzl press and T.Yoseloff, 1960. So
what about the idea of ‘a land without a people for a people without a
land’? Moshe Dayan says, “There is not one place built in this country that did not have a
former Arab population.” Ha-Aretz, April
4,1969. But
what about the claim that the Zionist legally owned much of the land before
Israel was established? “in 1948, at the moment Israel declared itself a state,
it owned a little more than 6% of
the land of Palestine…” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.” And
what about the claim that Palestine was a wasteland before the Jews started
immigrating? Well,
firstly, even if this was true it
wouldn’t be good reason to take away the rights of an indigenous population,
for even people in wastelands have a right to their wasteland, secondly and more
interestingly, the claim is clearly
false, as is shown by the following “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 the Jews without creating a class
of landless Arab cultivators’… The Colonial Office rejected the
recommendation.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to
Justice.” 2. Is the Zionist leadership aware of the true status of
their claims? Maybe some words of wisdom from one of Israel’s
founding fathers would shed some light on the issue. “In
1936-39, 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.” Or perhaps one would prefer the fair-minded evaluation
of one of Israel’s most prominent military men. “I
don’t understand the comparison between us
and South Africa. What we
have in common is that we both take
measures to ensure that we are not overpowered.
Those who say that Blacks in South Africa are persecuted are lying.
The Blacks there want to
overpower the white minority, just like the Arabs here want to overpower us.
And we, just like the South African minority, must act to make sure we
are not overpowered. I went
to see a diamond mine there and saw what superb conditions Black workers are
enjoying. So what if there is a separate lift for Blacks and Whites? That’s
the way they want it ...” (Rafael
Eitan, former chief of staff and Knesset member.
Quoted in Apartheid:
Israeli Style, David Paul. Or perhaps
another ‘great soldier’ who gave the command for conquering the Golan in
1967, Moshe Dayan can show us how the Zionist state engages in ‘peaceful
diplomacy’… to those who actually want to think rather than regurgitate
propaganda, please think if the word “TERRORIST” could ever be applied to
anyone with greater justification… “In
Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt’s
personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1995 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 ... 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 Rokack, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism. Did the Egyptians actually start
the 1967 war, as Israel originally claimed? Or was it another myth manufactured
by the Zionist leadership? Read on… “The
former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weizmann, 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 to the scale,
spirit and equality she now embodies.’ ... Menachem
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. And as for the ‘wide’ spectrum of opinion which allows for many
‘moderate Zionists’ “The
very point of Labor’s Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and
as few Arabs as possible!” – Yitzhak Navon (“moderate” ex-Israeli
president and a leading labor party politician.
Cited on p. 179 of Nur Masalha’s A Land without a People who cites Bernard Avishai’s The
Tragedy of Zionism, 1985, p. 340. So what were the Zionists actually doing and what were their main
methods of operation?
“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.
“In
1948, we deliberately, and not just in the heat of the war, expelled Arabs. Also
in 67 after the Six-Day War, we expelled many Arabs.” Tzvi Shiloah, a
senior veteran of the Mapai Party and former deputy mayor of the town of
Hertzeliyah. (Modelet, no.12, October 1989) But
many believe that the main reason behind the urgency felt by the Zionists was
due to the holocaust. Isn’t the state of Israel a justified demand because
of the Jewish experience during the Second World War? In the words of Ben
Gurion, the answer is a clear NO!
“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 this land is ours. And 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. Now, given all that is given above, one may be curious to know why the
Zionist leadership, being aware of its history, is now so unwilling to even
accept the existence of Palestine, well, the following may shed some light… “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 no 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 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 countries of your ancestors and 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.” Menachem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky’s Peace
in the Middle East. Moreover,
it seems that the Zionist leadership has not always been so adamant about
the ‘irrational’ and ‘unreasonable’ attitude of the Arabs. In fact,
in a similar situation, they would behave in the very same way. “Why should the Arabs make
peace? If I were 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? 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 Nahum Goldmann, former president of the World
Jewish Congress. And what about the opinions of Israeli intellectuals? “Jews
came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We
wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same
time.…” Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe,
Israeli Historian at Haifa University. “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 rights
[as Jews] because none of them believed
in universal rights. Pretending,
like [Arthur] Hertzberg and other 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...” Israeli Professor of political
science, Ze’ev Sternhell, in “Tikkun,” May/June 1998. “Till
then everyone in Israel spoke about Arabs who had just run away in 1948 existed
no real historical research on it. There were two conflicting propaganda
versions, one Arab and another Jewish. As one who received his education in
Israel, I thought I knew that Arabs had ‘run away.’ But I knew nothing else.
The Jewish generations of 1948,
however, knew the truth and deliberately misrepresented it. They knew there were
plenty of mass deportations, massacres and rapes .... The soldiers and the
officials knew, but they suppressed what they knew and were deliberately disseminated.”
Israeli Historian Benny Morris in an interview with
Rami Tal published in Israeli Daily Yediot Ahronot, December 1994. But suppose
that the Israeli claim that it only occupied territories after it was attacked
is true, would that justify its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza?
NOT REALLY! EVEN IF THE ISRAELI CLAIM IS TRUE, THE
OCCUPATION IS STILL ILLEGIMATE! “Under
the U.N. 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 [U.N.] 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. “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 depart or transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” John
Quigley, Palestine and Israel: A Challenge
to Justice. Finally, why won’t the problem simply ‘go away’?
“The
plans, which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist movement from its
origins (across the ideological spectrum), were articulated in internal
discussion by Israeli government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic
cleansing was underway: their expectation was that the refugees “would be
crushed” and “die,” while “most of them would turn into human dust and
the waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab
countries.” Noam Chomsky, “Al-Aqsa Intifada.” 3. Anti-Zionism IS NOT Anti-Semitism Is
there an absolutely necessary connection between Zionism and Judaism? Is it
correct to hold that one who criticizes the former also criticizes the latter? THE SIMPLE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION GIVEN
ABOVE IS NO! THIS IS SUPPORTED BY THE FACT THAT MANY PROMINENT JEWISH LEADERS
HAVE SPOKEN AGAINST ZIONISM. “In
an article published in the Washington Post of October 3, 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
re-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. MOREOVER, IT
WOULD BE WRONG TO IDENTIFY ISRAEL WITH THE JEWISH PEOPLE, AS THE FOLLOWING
STATEMENT BY BEN GURION SHOWS “[Ben-Gurion
stated], ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in 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. Why
does the Zionist leadership insist on equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism? “Nothing has accounted more for the success of
Zionism and Israelism in the Western world than the skillful attack on the soft
underbelly of world opinion – ‘Mr. Decent Man’s’ total repugnance toward
anti-Semitism. The charge of this
bias, instantaneously bringing forth the specter of Nazi Germany, so totally
pulverizes the average Christian that by contrast calling him a Communist is a
pleasant epithet. It was the Christian revulsion toward anti-Semitism
in the wake of Hitlerian genocide, not the superiority of Zionist over Arab
rights, that first created and then firmly entrenched the Israeli state, even
permitting the occupation of conquered territories in the face of the U.N.
charter and international morality. So
strong has become the general aversion to anti-Semitism that even the
full-blooded Semite, the Arab, absurd as it may be, has difficulty defending
himself against this charge.” Alfred L.
Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace? Pp. 403-4. Parlimentarian Ian Gilmour, writing in the British
magazine The Spectator, noted the inevitable link between Zionism and
anti-Semitism: “Since
the basis of Zionism is that Jewish assimilation in other countries is in the
long run impossible and that anti-Semitism and persecution are bound to break
out sooner or later, Zionism has almost a vested interest in racial
discrimination. The Israelis mount “rescue operations” to save allegedly
threatened Jews in other countries… In
Arab countries, Jewish difficulties and emigration to Israel were the result not
of anti-Semitism, but of Zionist activities and the existence of the State of
Israel. Zionism aggravated the disease that it professed to cure.” Alfred
L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection:
What Price Peace ? p. 411. In
fact, there is also some reason to believe that the Zionists encourage
anti-Semitism…
“The
separatist philosophy of the Zionist dogma, staunchly supported by Organized
Jewry after the holocaust, has been picked up alike by “retrogressive”
conservatives and by liberal friends who would otherwise look askance at the
mere mention of apartheid. And this overwhelming sentiment manifested itself,
almost as if in answer to the blunt
warning of Goldmann that a “current decline of overt ‘anti-Semitism’ might
constitute a new danger to Jewish survival… The disappearance of
‘anti-Semitism’ in its classical meaning, while beneficial to the political
and material situation of Jewish communities, has had a very negative effect on
our internal life.” Counsel Leo
Pfeffer of the American Jewish Congress voiced a similar statement: “Such
discrimination may well be a blessing. It is possible that some anti-Semitism is
necessary in order to insure Jewish survival. In Britain, too, an article in
Blackfriars Magazine pointed to the danger of the extinction of the
Jewish community because of the absence of anti-Semitism.” Alfred
L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection:
What Price Peace?, p. 412. The
rabbinate had long employed anti-Semitism as a means of keeping the flock within
the fold, and since the creation of Israel, support in the Diaspora has been
continuously and easily enlisted by depicting the new Jewish state as a kind of
insurance policy in case of a renaissance of anti-Semitism. Consequently,
Zionist leadership has cared little about how much anti-Semitism their own
activities might generate. The
late British Parliamentarian Richard H.S. Crossman, an ardent Anglo-Saxon
proponent of Zionism, cited Dr. Chaim
Weizmann’s contention that “anti-Semitism is a bacillus which every Gentile
carries with him wherever he goes and however often he denies it.” At this
first meeting Dr. Chaim Weizmann allegedly bluntly asked Crossman whether he was
anti-Semitic, to which the Labourite frankly answered, “Of course.” Their
friendship was sealed, and Crossman’s energetic crusade, partly expiation for
that initial prejudice, followed. Bigotry
has only been so much grist for Zionist mills. Crossman expressed it thus:
“Who achieved the majority vote for partition at Lake Success? Not the
terrorists of Irgun nor the soldiers of the Haganah, but the aged leader of
international Jewry [Weizmann], who could still sham and magic the Gentile world
into recognizing its debt to her people.” It is this continued process of
shaming the Christian world into accepting the guilt for the genocide of six
million Jews that first brought Israel into being, and since then has been the
means of rallying continued support for Israel’s cause in the U.S. and in the
Western world. Alfred L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace ? p. 411. Is
this attitude rational? “The
emotional reaction, engendered by Nazi genocide, has given rise to an eleventh
commandment, ‘Thou shalt not be anti-Semitic,’ and to a corollary twelfth
commandment, ‘Thou must be anti-anti-Semitic.’ No Christian wishes to run
afoul of these supplements to the interdictions handed down by Moses from Mount
Sinai. In their zeal to carry out
the new commandments, the anti-anti-Semites, guided by Organized Jewry, have
rejected the basic distinction between those who are against Zionism-Israelism
because they deplore its political precepts and abhor the consequences wrought
by its measure, and those who are against Jews because they simply dislike Jews.
Christian anti-Zionists and even Jewish anti-Zionists are alike denounced
as anti-Semites – discussion, muted doubts, and debate on Middle East policy
are crushed.” Alfred L. Lilienthal, The Zionist
Connection: What Price Peace? p. 404. “However,
the presence of this sociological phenomenon should not give inviolability to
the ruthless suppression of even the most constructive criticism of the State of
Israel and of the multifold Zionist organizations. Anti-Zionism can no more be
equated with anti-Semitism, the racist ideology directed against Jews as Jews,
than Zionism can be equated with Judaism.” Alfred
L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection:
What Price Peace?, p. 404. “The
ADL’s (Anti-Defamation League) earlier emphasis on stamping out genuine
prejudice and bigotry gave way long ago to acts of defamation, spying, and
publishing spurious literary productions, motivated by support of Israel and
effected by eliminating critics of Zionist tactics.” Alfred
L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection:
What Price Peace,?, p. 405 “Dr.
Willard Oxtoby, writing in Presbyterian
Life, had this to say on the effect of the anti-Semitism labeling: Hopefully,
anti-Semitism may soon become a sin of the past, but for the time being, it is
still an emotionally potent word and nobody wants to be caught being
anti-Semitic. . . . Like the news media,
and for the same reasons, the Christian critic of Zionism is paralyzed.
He cannot condemn Israeli armed conquest because he must pussyfoot in the
delicate area of religious prejudice. As
a result, Zionism is a subject on which in the United States there is more
effective suppression of freedom of speech than any other.” Alfred
L. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection:
What Price Peace ? Pg.407. 4.
The Unethical and Criminal Nature of the Israeli State “The
main difference between Bosnia and Palestine is that ethnic cleansing in the
former took place in the form of dramatic massacres and slaughters which caught
the world’s attention, whereas in Palestine, what is taking place is a
drop-by-drop tactic in which one or two houses are demolished daily, a few acres
are taken here and there every day, a few people forced to leave.”
Edward Said, Washington
Report, 09/1998 (page cut) “The
old cry of the late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz that ‘the occupation corrupts’
is today correct in the full sense of the word, Israel can no longer live with
the illusion that it is maintaining a democratic way of life while at the same
time a separate normative system exists for the settlers that tramples human
rights in the territories to the point where those who kill are treated
forgivingly.” Ha’aretz
Editorial, 24 September, 1998. Israel’s Unique methods of punishment
“The
demolition and sealing of houses are among the most severe methods of punishment
used by the authorities against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
To our knowledge, this harsh form of punishment is unique to Israel and
is not employed by any other nation. Demolition
and sealing of houses in the territories contravene international law that
prohibits collective punishment and arbitrary injuries to property.” (B’Tselem,
an Israeli Human Rights Organization. http://www2.iol.co.il/btselem/) “To
solidify their gains after the 1967 war, according to U.N. figures, the Israelis
destroyed during the period between June 11, 1967 and November 15, 1969 so ...
7,554 Palestinian Arab homes in the territories seized during that war; this
figure excluded thirty-five villages in the occupied Golan Heights that were
razed to the ground. In the two
years between September 1969 and 1971 the figure was estimated to have reached
16,312.” – from The Zionist Connection, by Alfred Lilienthal, p. 160. Expelling
people from their homes and forcing them to become refugees is a familiar
Israeli strategy "Israeli
forces occupied [the Golan Heights] during the 1967 war. With its occupation of
the Golan Heights, Israel expelled over 120,000 inhabitants - mostly Syrians but
also several thousand Palestinian refugees. At the same time, Israel destroyed
two cities, 133 villages and 61 farms. After this devastation, only 6,396
inhabitants remained in the six villages left standing. On December 14, 1981,
the Israeli Knesset unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights in clear
contravention of international law. The UN Security Council subsequently
declared the annexation illegal and, to date, not a single state has recognized
it. Israel has so far built more than 40 settlements, housing over 15,000
settlers in the Golan Heights." -- New Yorkers for a Just Middle East Peace
(NYJMEP) from a letter dating 08/13/1998 sent to Perry Odak, Chief Executive
Officer of Ben and Jerry's, protesting a reported agreement between the popular
ice cream company and Eden Springs water company, based on the Israeli-occupied
Golan Heights. The so-called ‘HUMANE’ behavior of
settlers who return from the ‘Diaspora’
“It
has been able ‘to double the number of settlers in 10 years, to enlarge the
settlements, to continue its discriminatory policy of cutting back water quotas
for three million Palestinians, to prevent Palestinian development in most of
the area of the West Bank, and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas,
imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant for Jews only.” (Chomsky,
“Intifada”) The
‘humane’ massacres committed by the Zionist army against
‘terrorists’ The
Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestine 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 this kind? “By 1948, the Jew was able not only to
‘defend himself’ but to commit massive atrocities as well.
Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives,
‘in almost every Arab 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. The ‘benevolent’ and ‘humane’ treatment of prisoners by the
Israeli Security Services
“The
[UN] Committee against torture ... reached an unequivocal conclusion ... ‘The
methods of interrogation [used in Israeli prisons] ... are in the Committee’s
view in breach 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’tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human
Rights in the Occupied Territories, “Routine Torture: Interrogation Methods of
the General Security Service.” “There
is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews.
Many young girls were raped and later slaughtered.
Old women were also molested.” (General Richard Catling, British Army
Assistant Inspector after interrogating several female survivors. The
Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo,
1987. U.N.
Human Rights Commission “declares that Israel’s grave breaches of the Geneva
Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in the time of war of
12 August, 1949 are war crimes and an affront against humanity.” Even the Christians (Arab) of the
occupied territories
are not safe…
The
Christian population of (the ever expanding) Jerusalem was 30,000 in 1948; today
it is 2000, due to the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from that and
other areas around Israel. Paul
Findley’s Deliberate Deceptions,
1996. 5. The RACIST
Nature of ZIONISM The racist
policies of the Nazi regime and its racist attitude about the “Jewish
Problem” is well known. The Jews faced horrible persecution the hands of the
Nazi’s. So, did this stop the Zionists from adopting the same policies with
regard to others? Unfortunately, the answer is NO!
“In
A.D. 1948, the Jews knew from personal experience what they were doing and it
was their supreme tragedy that the lessons learned by them from their encounter
with Nazi German Gentiles should have been not to eschew but to imitate some of
the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews. On the Day of
Judgement the gravest crime standing to the German National Socialist account
might not be that they had exterminated a majority of Western Jews, but that
they had caused the surviving remnant of Jewry to stumble.” Arnold
Toynbee quoted in Alfred L. Lilienthal, The
Zionist Connection: What Price Peace? Pg.730. An interesting
example of Israel’s racism can be seen in its repeated denial of even the
existence of the Palestinian people! “There
is no such thing as a Palestinian people . . . It is not as if we came and threw
them out and took their country. They
didn’t exist.” (Golda Meir statement to The
Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969) see
p. 51 of Triangle. Naturally this attitude serves to simplify issues considerably, talk
about ‘conceding that the other side has a point”!
“How
can we return the occupied territories? There
is nobody to return them to.” Golda Meir, quoted
in Ch. 13 of The Zionist Connection: What
Price Peace?, Alfred Lilienthal. What
about the attitude of other Israeli leaders? “I
have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without
deceit and adventurism.” – Moshe
Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister and later a Prime Minister (p.
51 Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel,” 1987). “We
declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of
Eretz Israel.... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the
ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours . . .
When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to
scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.” Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan Gad
Becker, Yediot Aharonot 13 April, 1983
and The New York Times, 14 April,
1983. Fateful Triangle, p. 130. “In
our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out!
If they don’t agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by
force.” Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, Israel’s first
Minister of Education, 1954, from History
of the Haganah. “Take
the American Declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial
limits. We are not obliged to fix
the limits of the State.” Moshe Dayan, Jerusalem
Post, 10 August, 1967. “...
we have no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever
wants to can leave -–and we will see where this process leads?
In five years, we may have 200,000 less people – and that is a matter
of enormous importance.” Moshe Dayan encouraging transfer of Gaza strip
refugees to Jordan. from Noam Chomsky’s Deterring
Democracy, 1992, p. 434, quoted in Masalha’s A
Land Without a People, 1997, p. 92. “While
campaigning for the prime ministership, Binyamin Netanyahu criticized his
opponents for missing an opportunity during the Tiannamen Square massacre.
The minister, he said, he would have seized the chance then, while the
world was ... out the transfer of the Palestinians.” -- p.
137, Washington Report 09/1998. “I
don’t sign orders to destroy the houses of Jews, only of Arabs.” Haim
Miller, deputy mayor of Jerusalem and acting mayor in Olmert’s absence,
quoted in Yediot Aharonot, Feb. 7,
1998. “The
phenomenon that has prevailed among us for years is that of insensitivity to
acts of wrong ... [Consequently], public opinion, the army, the police’s ...
conclusion was that Arab blood can be freely shed. And then came the amnesty for those [convicted of the
massacre at] Kufr Qasim, and some conclusions could be drawn again, and I could
go on like this ... It must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a
savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been
established and accepted by contemporary society.”
Israel’s prime minister, Moshe Sharett, in 1961, quoted
in Livia Rokach, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism. “In
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.” Norman Finkelstein, Image
and Reality of the Palestine-Israel Conflict. However,
a few bold voices have dared to speak out against
the status quo… “...
it is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of
truths. One truth is that there is
no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating the Arabs, and
without expropriating lands and their fencing off.” Yesha’ayahu Ben-Porat, Yedi’ot
Aharonot, 14 July, 1972, responding to public controversy regarding the
Israeli evictions of Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza. In
the mainstream British press, we can at least read that “if Palestinians were
black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by
the United States [which is not accurate, unfortunately].
Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system
of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny
fraction of its own country, in self-administered ‘bantustans’, with
‘whites’ monopolizing the supply of water and electricity.
And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa’s white
areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel’s treatment of
Israeli Arabs – flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and
education spending – would be recognized as scandalous too.” Observer,
Guardian, Oct. 15. 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 villagers who did
not flee, and the laws passed to legalize these 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? “They
[Israel] have typically concealed the continually expansionist nature of ...
Western sponsors and pursued a ‘step by step’ process toward these goals.
... Arab rhetoric to frighten Jews and convince them that the Arab world is
genocidal ..., that no peace is possible with them, Israeli leaders have been
quite aware of ... Arab world to deliver on this militant rhetoric.” Rosemary
and Herman Rueth, The Wrath of Jonah. Note:
See also “Collection of
Ha’aretz articles on Israeli discrimination against Arabs” at: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/snakebite/DISCRIM_Arab_Isr.html
Extracted from: www.inin.net |