Jeet Heer, National Post
Published: Wednesday, May 07, 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=497324
Sixty years ago, a 12-year-old boy witnessed the slaughter of his
family. His name was Fahim Zaydan, and he lived in the Arab village of
Deir Yassin in Mandate Palestine, which was attacked on April 9, 1948,
by Irgun and Stern Gang troops, paramilitary forces allied with the
right-wing of the Zionist movement. These troops swooped into the
village and started machine gunning civilians. Those that survived
this initial attack were then forced by the troops to gather outside.
"They took us out one after the other," Zaydan recalled. "Shot an old
man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they
called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front of us, and when my
mother yelled, bending over him -- carrying my little sister Hudra in
her hands, still breastfeeding her -- they shot her too."
Irgun commander Ben Zion-Cohen offered a more succinct account of what
happened: "We eliminated every Arab that came our way." This statement
glosses over the fact that some of the Arab women were raped by Irgun
and Stern Gang troops before they were killed. At least 93 civilians
in the village were murdered that day, not just women and children but
also babies.
The massacre at Deir Yassin is one of the most famous atrocities of
1948, but it was not the only one nor the largest. In fact, if one
were cynical one could argue that Deir Yassin gets publicized only
because its perpetrators were Irgun and Stern Gang troops, easy
scapegoats who can be blamed for the violence in order to make the
mainstream Labor Zionism of David Ben-Gurion look more respectable.
Deir Yassin was in fact a microcosm of what happened in Palestine as a
whole in 1948: Zionist troops, including those under Ben-Gurion's
command, used terror tactics to force the indigenous population to
flee. Israel was founded through an act of ethnic cleansing, of a type
all too familiar in recent history.
The creation of the State of Israel was both a triumph and a tragedy.
The triumph is well known: how the fledgling and precarious Zionist
movement, still recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust, waged a
war of national liberation in Palestine, creating a new Jewish state
while fending off hostile Arab armies. It's an inspiring story of a
scrappy underdog who wins against the odds. This triumph is often
celebrated in religious and mythical terms (think of the title of Leon
Uris's hugely popular novel Exodus, evocative of Moses).
But there was a tragic side to Israel's founding. The ethnic cleansing
that allowed Israel to emerge was a terrible trauma for the Arab
victims, and it continues to haunt the Jewish state to this day. The
external war against Arab armies was mirrored by an internal war
against Arabs living inside Palestine. Because of this tragic legacy,
uncritically celebrating 1948 does a disservice to Jews and Arabs
alike.
I know many readers will be shocked by my use of the words "ethnic
cleansing," which seem so harsh to those raised on the myth-making of
Leon Uris. But the fact is that the best recent historians of Israel's
founding, some of whom are ardent Zionists, have made it clear that
the events of 1948 were an ethnic cleansing. The only serious debate
is whether this ethnic cleansing was a deliberate policy by Zionist
leaders or an accidental byproduct of the fog of war.
To understand what happened, consider the situation that the Zionist
movement faced in Palestine before 1948: They had too few Jews (less
than half the population of Mandate Palestine), too little land (Jews
owned less than 6% of the land) and too many Arabs.
In 1938, David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive, "I am for
compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it."
Ben-Gurion and his followers were remarkably successful in this policy
of "compulsory transfer." By 1949, more than 700,000 Palestinians had
been made into refugees, more than 500 villages had been destroyed and
many Arab urban neighbourhoods were depopulated. As Israeli military
commander Yitzhak Pundak recalled in 2004 of events he participated
in, "There were 200 villages and these are gone. We had to destroy
them, otherwise we would have had Arabs here [in the Southern part of
Palestine] as we have in Galilee. We would have had another million
Palestinians."
If you look at Zionism from a Western perspective, its logic is clear
and compelling. Anti-Semitism has deep roots in European history and
the Holocaust demonstrated what happens to Jews when they don't have
the protective ****eld of their own state. And the guilt for the
Holocaust belongs not just to the Germans, who were the primary
perpetrators, but also their many
collaborators in Poland, Ukraine, France and elsewhere. Nor were the
English-speaking peoples innocent: England, Canada, the United States
and the other members of the anglosphere made extraordinary efforts to
keep out Jewish refugees. Western civilization committed terrible
crimes in the 1930s and 1940s, and the West owes the Jews a state.
But if you look at Zionism from a global perspective, one that
acknowledges that Arabs are human beings, then the morality becomes
much murkier. Unlike the peoples of Europe, the Palestinians weren't
direct participants in the Holocaust. Why should Palestinians lose
their land because of crimes committed by Germans, Poles, Ukrainians
and other Europeans? It's difficult to look at the founding of Israel,
the displacement of the indigenous population and the ongoing
occupation, and not conclude that the Palestinians are paying a huge
price for other people's sins.
In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, the historian Benny
Morris, a mainstream Labour Zionist, offered a partial justification
of the ethnic cleansing of 1948. "There is no justification for acts
of rape," he admitted. "There is no justification for acts of
massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion
is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war
crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to
dirty your hands."
Morris went on to say: "There are cir***stances in history that
justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative
in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between
ethnic cleansing and genocide -- the annihilation of your people -- I
prefer ethnic cleansing." (One might question whether in 1948 the
indigenous Arab population of Palestine, a peasant population far less
organized than their Jewish rivals, wanted genocide or were even
capable of it.)
The events of 1948 continue to shape Israel's destiny. In many ways,
Israel has been a remarkably successful nation. When I visited it in
2004 I was struck by the good humour and decency of Israel's citizens,
the liveliness of its political culture, its prosperity and its
cultural achievements. Still, Israel is very different from what the
original Zionists wanted. Their dream was that it would become a
normal nation, a Jewish counterpart to England, France or Canada.
But in fact, because of its unique security situation, Israel is far
from a normal country. Politically, socially and economically, it is
hugely militarized (arguably, its recent economic boom has come in
part from the new market for arms created by global instability). Like
ancient Sparta, the citizen-soldiers of Israel have to constantly be
on guard lest the helots revolt. The Arab population, both those who
live in Israel as citizens and those under military occupation, are a
constant source of worry. Israel's greatest point of pride, its claim
to be a democracy, is undermined by the decades old occupation of
Palestinian lands, a situation that resembles apartheid-era South
Africa.
Moreover, Israel is completely dependent for its survival on the
goodwill of the United States, a diminished imperial power. If the
United States were ever to turn its back on Israel, as the superpower
did to other controversial allies such as South Vietnam and apartheid-
era South Africa, the Jewish state would face a friendless world.
Throughout the globe, Israel is losing legitimacy. This can be seen
among young Jews in Canada and the United States, who are much colder
toward Zionism than their parents and grandparents.
Despite all its great achievements, Israel's situation 60 years after
its founding is deeply problematic. The best solution for Israel's
problems is to make restitution for the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and
help create a viable Palestinian state. Only when this happens will
the dream of Israel as a normal nation be fulfilled.
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