I wrote:
> > > BTW, I was touched by your solicitude for the Palestinian refugees. I had > > always thought that their plight was due to the fact that they (770,000 of > > them in the late 1940s, more in 1967) were ethnically cleansed by the > > Zionists, who bear a legal and moral responsibility to deal with the > > refugee issue. And Alan responded: > No. The Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes by the leaders of > the Arab states so that they could drive the Jews into the sea, promising > their land back once they had won the war(s). Most of the Palestinians left > of their own accord. Many of them sold their land and houses to Jewish > immigrants fair and square, but now claim their land was stolen. > > Now you are the one that does not have the facts right. There was no ethnic > cleansing by the Jews. In fact, there are still many ethnically Arab > Israelis even now. > Bravo, Alan, bravo. You have just proven, with the above, how ignorant and arrogant you truly are. Since you insist on wearing the dunce's cap, I am only too glad to oblige you by placing it squarely on your head. Perhaps after the crowning ceremony you can oblige us in turn by going to the corner and shutting up for a change. To summarize your claim: In 1947-48, the Palestinian Arabs (not all of them, as everyone is aware, but the vast majority of them) voluntarily left their land at the urging of Arabs from surrounding Arab states, the plan apparently being to return with the conquering Arab armies and drive all the Jews into the sea. A novel strategy, to say the least. And the truly heartbreaking part is that the Zionists implored the Palestinians not to leave. This claim has a long history. It was a staple of Israeli state propaganda in the 1950s and was offered as a justification for the displacement of the native population of Palestine and the refusal of the newly founded state of Israel to deal with the refugee problem. There is only one problem with the story. It is a lie. And a fatuous one to boot, and only a fool would take it at face value. After this silly tale was repeated for a decade, an Irish journalist named Erskine Childers took an interest in it. It sounded fishy and bizarre, so he went to Israel to check on it. He asked for evidence, that is, proof, in the form of radio transcripts of broadcasts by neighboring Arab governments urging Palestinians to flee (which was the proof Israel had always claimed to have for this preposterous story). Here is the article that resulted: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~recross/israel-watch/ErskinChilders.html As Childers indicates, there is not a shred of evidence that the Palestinians left their land at the behest of other Arab regimes. Promises by Israeli officials to produce "proof positive" of this claim never resulted in a single piece of evidence of Arab broadcasts urging the Palestinians to leave Palestine. There are, however, readily available records of repeated Arab broadcasts urging the Palestinians to stay put despite the hostilities. As further noted by Childers in this piece and at greater length in his essay "The Wordless Wish: From Citizens to Refugees" (in the volume "The Transformation of Palestine", edited by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Northwestern University Press, 1971), virtually all of the "evidence" provided by Israeli leaders in support of their claims amount to nothing more than a handful of obvious falsehoods like the above, and some quotes from David Ben Gurion and Abba Eban denying the use of coercion or terror by Israeli forces. In other words, it is all Israeli state propaganda that collapses under the slightest critical scrutiny. So what really happened? Well, here we enter in the territory of historical fact, which has been extensively mined by Palestinians, Jews (both Israelis and non-Israelis) and objective outside observers like Childers. The basic facts are clear, and readily available to anyone with a library card and a couple of hours of free time. You can find them in such works as the path-breaking edited volume cited above, the scholarly "Journal of Palestine Studies", which is published by UCal Berkeley, the study by Israeli historian Simha Flapan entitled "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities" (see in particular the chapter entitled "Myth 3" (Pantheon, 1987), "Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question" (Verso, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, 1988), and the works of the Israeli New Historians I mentioned in my previous message (there are some important differences of emphasis and opinion in the last, and also problems based on the extent to which a historian relied solely on official Israeli sources and could not read Arabic, as is the case with Benny Morris' books). Basically, the Palestinians were either expelled by force of arms, primarily as a result of the implementation of Plan D [AKA Plan Daleth], the general plan for ethnic cleansing drawn up in March 1948 by the Haganah, or fled in terror as a result of massacres perpetrated by the Irgun and like groups, the most famous instance being the murder of 250 unarmed villagers in Deir Yassin in April 1948. Now I could give an extensive blow-by-blow account of the use of force to expel Palestinians (those interested can consult the works of the New Historians), but in the interests of brevity I will just illustrate the first point by citing what none other than Yitzhak Rabin, an eyewitness, said about the ethnic cleansing of Lydda (cited from Flapan, p. 81): "Yigal Allon asked Ben-Gurion what was to be done with the civilian population. Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture of 'drive them out'. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lydda did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten or fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the Arab Legion." And so on, throughout the cities, towns and villages of Palestine, with the partial exception of Haifa. It is for this reason that Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, in his study "A HIstory of Modern Palestine" (Cambridge University Press, 2004), entitles his section on this period "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (March-May 1948)". As for terror, Flapan explains the rationale and after effects of the massacre at Deir Yassin [AKA Dir Yassin] as follows: "Former mayor of Jerusalem Khalidi called the massacre of Dir Yassin senseless... But from another perspective, it made perfect sense. More panic was sown among the Arab population by this operation than by anything that had happened up to then. Dir Yassin is considered by most historians to have been the DIRECT REASON [my emphasis] for the flight of Arabs from Haifa on April 21 and from Jaffa on May 4, and the final collapse of the Palestinian fighting forces. (Flapan, pp. 94-95)" Flapan goes on to note that although Ben-Gurion condemned this and other massacres, he did absolutely nothing to rein in these paramilitaries and prevent them from perpetrating the same again, despite the urgings of Moshe Sharett and other Zionist leaders. So there we have it. The vast majority of the estimated 770,000 Palestinians who fled Palestine in 1947-48 did so under compulsion by Zionist forces or out of terror caused by massacres like the one at Deir Yassin. You can continue to stick your head in the sand and reiterate your AIPAC talking points, Alan, but this is the generally accepted scholarly view of this issue at this point in time, even in most Israeli historiography (though there are of course differences in emphasis, and also critics like Efraim Karsh). But you would have to read a book once in a while to be aware of this, or at least consult Wikipedia. How much easier it is to cite 60 year old discredited propaganda, eh, Alan? And you further demonstrate your ignorance, Alan, by describing Palestinians as blood-thirsty fanatics bent on genocide against the Jews. This is yet another fabrication of Israeli state propaganda, and sadly many people here still believe this owing to the pro-Israeli bent of the US media. But if you actually bothered to learn something about the Palestinians, you would discover that they are the most secular, best educated and most prosperous of all the national groups among the Arabs. In my experience with them, which began back in the early 1980s when I took several years of Arabic as an undergrad, they are also genuinely decent and eminently practical and reasonable people. But they are also highly nationalistic and aggrieved about the loss of their homeland, and understandably get irritated when an ignoramus or propagandist hawks what they know to be a lot of Zionist lies, for example the claim that they voluntarily abandoned their homeland in the late 1940s. All of this would be academic, of course, except for the fact that the Palestinian refugee problem has been a major cause of the repeated wars that have afflicted the region for the last 60 years. This is why reasonable people have exerted so much time and effort trying to find a just and lasting solution to the problem. It is also why it was absolutely foolhardy for the Bush administration to throw its support behind Ariel Sharon, who was long bent on undermining just such a reasonable solution, one based on the Oslo Accords and the creation of a Palestinian state (which lest we forget it was part of the original partition plan approved by the UN in the late 1940s). The end result of this has been the further radicalization of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. The violence employed to destroy the Palestinian Authority will reap bitter fruit in the near future, and the blame once again lies in part with the short-sighted, ill-advised policies of the Bush administration. . Finally, on a personal note, I must say I feel sorry for you, Alan. You were clearly born in the wrong era. You would have fit right in back in the 1950s, when it was possible to wave the flag and hurl slanders like "Commie", without any need to provide any evidence, and thereby end all debate. It must be trying for you to live in a time and country where proof of your silly slanders is required, where people actually have access to evidence other than the pablum doled out by the government and groups like AIPAC, where people actually read books critical of their own government and think for themselves. You label all this "communism", "New Left" (!; another Siegristian howler) propaganda, and so. I prefer to think of it as "independent thought". Well, enough for now. Perhaps like my last message, this one will have an emetic effect, and you will hack up some more coprolites for our examination. Maybe next it will be the secret Sino-Soviet plot to lull the West into complacency, which so exercised James Angleton? Or perhaps the danger posed to American liberty by Cuba? Or perhaps you will take my advice, and read a serious book for a change. John Marchioro --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
