"peace.seeker.27" <vesuvian.doppelgange@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:a1a9e33d-f03e-4f44-9638-8ebbc6cc5145@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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.
Yeah, with a big uncle behind them lol
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."
But the UN did not give the jews permission to go into these areas.
>
> 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,
So is Lebenon
>
> 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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