The historic wronging of Palestine
By Mary Rizzo • May 10th, 2008 at 10:23 • Category: Analysis, Documents, Israel, Mary's Choice, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Zionism
WRITTEN BY DAVID MORRISON (art by Carlos Latuff)
The state of Israel came into existence 60 years ago on 14 May 1948. In the months before and after this declaration, Jewish forces drove around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Over 500 villages were emptied of their Palestinian population and most of them were destroyed so that those expelled had no homes to return to.
Anybody who doubts that ethnic cleansing took place on this scale should read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe. In it, he describes Plan Dalet (D in Hebrew), which set out the areas to be cleansed and the methods to be employed by Zionist forces in carrying out the cleansing. Here is a sample of the latter:
“These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centres which are difficult to control continuously; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.”
The plan was approved by the Zionist leadership on 10 March 1948, and put into operation immediately.
* * * *
The Zionist movement to establish a homeland for Jews in Palestine began in Europe in the late 19th century, when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was given impetus by the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which stated that Britain viewed with favour “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and undertook to use its “best endeavours” to bring it about. The Declaration also made the incompatible commitment that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. At that time, the “existing non-Jewish communities” constituted around 90% of the population.
During World War I, Britain also promised to recognise an Arab state in the Middle East, in exchange for Arab assistance in overthrowing Ottoman rule. However, Britain made a conflicting agreement with France - the Sykes-Picot Agreement - for joint control of the Middle East. So, instead of the promised Arab state, Britain and France balkanised the Middle East into a series of states under their control. Britain was granted a mandate to administer Palestine by the newly formed League of Nations. The mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration’s commitment to a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
Under British rule, the Jewish colonisation of Palestine gathered pace and by the mid 1930s Jews made up nearly 30% of the population compared with around 10% twenty years earlier. As the unlimited extent of the colonisation became evident, Arab opposition rose and led to the Arab Revolt from 1936-39, in which around 5,000 Arabs, and 400 Jews, were killed.
In 1937, the Peel Commission set up by Britain proposed for the first time the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state. Arab opposition led to the proposal being dropped and to Britain severely restricting further Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1939. This restriction continued throughout World War II at a time when Jews were desperate to escape Nazi persecution in Europe.
In 1947, Britain announced its intention to give up the mandate and to withdraw from Palestine on 15 May 1948. The newly formed UN set up a commission which recommended another partition scheme. This was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in resolution 181 passed on 29 November 1947 by 33 votes to 10, despite the opposition of the Palestinians and all Arab states. It is worth noting that, unlike UN Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not binding on UN member states.
The partition plan divided Palestine into three parts. It was extraordinarily generous to the Jews, who at the time made up about a third of the population and owned less than 6% of the total land. Despite this, the partition plan allocated almost 56% of the land to a Jewish state, in an area in which there were about 500,000 Jews but also 440,000 Arabs. On 42% of the land, 800,000+ Arabs were to have a state with a small Jewish minority (10,000) and a small area around Jerusalem was to be under international control.
The Zionist leadership accepted the partition plan publicly, but with the clear intention of working against it, understandably so, since it was impossible to establish a Jewish state in an area where nearly 50% of the population was Arab. “Transfer” of Arabs was necessary in order to establish a viable Jewish state. That’s what happened in the months before and after the declaration of the state of Israel in May 1948. The territory allocated to the Jewish state was expanded to include more than 78% of mandate Palestine and around 750,000 Palestinians were expelled into the rest of Palestine and the surrounding Arab states, where they and their descendants live today. That is how a viable Jewish state was established in Palestine in 1948.
* * * * *
The transfer of the Arab population out of Palestine was on the agenda of the Zionist movement from an early stage - since its presence got in the way of the establishment of a Jewish state. One of the movement’s liberal thinkers, Leo Motzkin, put it this way in 1917:
“Our thought is that the colonization of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel outside the country. The transfer of so many Arabs may seem at first unacceptable economically, but is nonetheless practical. It does not require too much money to resettle a Palestinian village on another land.” (The Motzkin Book, p 164)
David Ben-Gurion was the leader of the Zionist movement from the mid 1920s and the first Prime Minister of Israel. He told a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on 12 June 1938:
“I am for compulsory transfer. I see nothing immoral in it.”
It should be said that Zionist leaders were not alone in denying the Palestinians’ right to live in the land of Palestine. Here is an extract from evidence by a famous Briton to the Peel Commission in 1937:
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger [the Palestinians] has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place.”
The author was Winston Churchill. In his eyes, the native peoples of America and Australia, and Palestine, were lesser breeds, whose “place” could be taken over by superior breeds.
* * * *
The Zionist project did not stop at the 1949 armistice line, the so-called Green Line. Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has occupied the rest of mandate Palestine – the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – and continued its colonising mission in these areas. Today, there are nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers on confiscated Arab land in the Occupied Territories.
Israel has ignored Security Council resolutions demanding that it cease colonising the Occupied Territories. Colonising occupied territory is contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, paragraph 6 of which states:
“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Shamefully, the Security Council has not taken any enforcement action – economic sanctions, for example – to compel Israel to implement these resolutions. This is in stark contrast to the Security Council’s action in respect of, for example, Iraq and Iran.
(Israel is in violation of over 30 Security Council resolutions that require action by it alone, for example, resolutions 252, 267, 271 and 298 that require it to reverse its annexation of East Jerusalem, resolution 487 that calls upon it to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA supervision, resolution 497 demands that Israel reverse its annexation of the Golan Heights that belong to Syria, as well as resolutions 446, 452 and 465 that demand it cease settlement building. The Security Council has taken no enforcement action in respect of any of these.)
* * * *
The Zionist colonisation of Palestine, undertaken with the support of the West, has brought endless suffering to the Arab people of Palestine and deprived them of the enjoyment of their land. Had it not been for the Zionist colonisation, there would be no conflict in Palestine. Yet, remarkably, the colonisers are constantly portrayed in the Western media as the victims of Palestinian aggression.
A settlement in Palestine requires a recognition that an historic wrong has been done to the Arab people of Palestine and that appropriate redress has to be made.
Source: The Village Magazine, Ireland’s Current Affairs Website. (Hat tip from Brenda at Friends of Lebanon).
Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy.
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This quote by Churchill is astounding in its horror and racism.
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger [the Palestinians] has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place.”
More on Pappe: The Red House
In Tel Aviv “on March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.”-Dr. Ilan Pappe.
Dr. Pappe is Israeli born and a graduate of Hebrew University and Oxford. He is a well known revisionist or “post-Zionist” Israeli historian who has been both acclaimed and demonized. His most recent work is “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples” documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing.
Dr. Ilan Pappe spoke in East Jerusalem, Nov. 8, 2006 at the Notre Dame Conference center to over 330 International ecumenical Christians during Sabeel’s [www.sabeel.org] 6th International Conference:
The Forgotten Faithful: AKA Palestinian Christians.
His topic was the “Dynamics of Forgetting” and because of the “fierce urgency of now” [-Rev. MLK, Jr.] the world is beginning to remember that once there was a Red House, which birthed a most diabolical plan.
He stated, “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20’s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.”
Haganah is Hebrew for “The Defense” and was a Jewish paramilitary organization formed in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948. It began as a small group of “Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did the group have more than 100 members until after the Arab riots of 1920 and 1921. The Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, whom the League of Nations had given the Mandate of Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront the Arabs about attacks on the Palestinian Jews, and thus created the Haganah to protect their farmers and settlements. The initial role of the Haganah was to guard the Jewish Kibbutzim and farms, and to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs.
“In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah “units” were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment. It went from being an untrained militia to a capable army.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagganah
The British did not officially recognize the Haganah,but the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. By 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi (the National Military Organization), better known as “Irgun” (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced “HaEtsel”). They were discontented with the policy of restraint when faced with British and Arab pressure and “terrorists” in their own right. Irgun later split in 1940, and their off-shoot became known as the “Lehi” (Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, standing for Freedom Fighters of Israel, and also known by the British as the “Stern Gang” after its leader, Abraham Stern).
Because the British severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, in 1939 the Haganah created the Palmach - the Haganah’s strike force, which also organized illegal Jewish immigration of over 100,000 Jews to Palestine.
In 1944, in response to the assassination of Lord Moyne (the British Minister of State for the Middle East) by members of the Jewish Lehi underground, the Haganah worked with the British to round up, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action was called the Saison (or hunting season), and seriously demoralized the Irgun and reduced its activities.
The Saison could not stop the Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Group from working together. The three groups had different functions, which served to move the British out of Palestine and to make Palestine a Jewish state rather than created a Jewish home in Palestine.
Menachem Begin, an Irgun commander, stated in a 1944 meeting: “In fact, there is a division of roles; One organization advocates individual terrorism (the Lehi), the other conducts sporadic military operations (the Irgun) and there is a third organisation which prepares itself to throw its final weight in the decisive war.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagganah
According to Dr. Pappe, “On March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.
“The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened.
“From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a CRIME against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine.
“Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media.
“To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship.
“In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals!
“But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology.
“Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this.
“The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say “ENOUGH is ENOUGH!” The way to challenge and change the ethnic cleansing is to pursue true democracy and the use of sanctions and divestment, for money talks.”[end Dr. Pappe]
“America’s $84.8 billion in aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli.”
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/cost_of_israel.html
“The Israeli government and military receive $15,139,178.00 from the USA every day while NGO’s working to feed and care for the poor in Palestine receive $232,290.00 from the USA per day.”
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html
People have RIGHTS.
States and nations have obligations!
There will never be peace or security without JUSTICE.
Justice requires equal human rights for all and that governments honor international law.
IMAGINE what a wonderful world it will be when President Bush honors these words he said in his Second Inaugural Address :
“In the long run, there is no justice without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we stand with you.”
“The fierce urgency of now” should compel all USA citizens to phone, fax and email President Bush to finally honor that vow.
President George W. Bush
(202) 456-1414
White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111
Fax: (202) 456-2461
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
(202) 647-6575
Any Senator
(202) 224-3121
Any Representative
(202) 225-3121
E-Mail Congress and the White House:
Congress: visit for
President Bush: