David Ben Gurion on "cleansing" Galilee: Is this a fake?
Posted by deleted 10 years, 3 months ago to Politics
Before going into anything else: Is this quotation of David Ben Gurion considered a fake or not? It is from "Haaretz."
"If war broke out, we would then be able to clear the entire central Galilee with one fell swoop. But we cannot empty the central Galilee - that is, including the [Arab] refugees - without a war going on. The Galilee is full of [Arab] residents; it is not an empty region. If war breaks out throughout the entire country, this would be advantageous for us as far as the Galilee is concerned because, without having to make any major effort - we could use just enough of the force required for the purpose without weakening our military efforts in other parts of the country - we could empty the Galilee completely."
"If war broke out, we would then be able to clear the entire central Galilee with one fell swoop. But we cannot empty the central Galilee - that is, including the [Arab] refugees - without a war going on. The Galilee is full of [Arab] residents; it is not an empty region. If war breaks out throughout the entire country, this would be advantageous for us as far as the Galilee is concerned because, without having to make any major effort - we could use just enough of the force required for the purpose without weakening our military efforts in other parts of the country - we could empty the Galilee completely."
I would not have known or bothered with this writer otherwise.
I have since found some quotes of Morris:
"When the Palestinians rejected the proposal.... I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all".
My comment- That was said in year 2000. That it was not seen by Morris from 1947 events suggests foolishness or deliberate blindness. Better late than never.
"There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'" and "the demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two."
My comment- This does not seem to relate at all to what is in WD's post when reporting on a book by Morris.
WD, apparently using the work of Morris, tells us that the Zionists wanted war, they planned out the provocations needed to get war, planned the war itself, then, did it. Somehow those smart .err. Zionists persuaded the neighboring surrounding Arab nations to attack. The Zionists also planned against themselves an arms embargo, the Arab states had all the armaments they wanted from their friends in UK and USA. Zionists had to smuggle in guns and ammo from eastern Europe and SE Asia. People were smuggled in through the cordon of the British navy.
Comment 'no Palestinians'- The term was invented by the British and applied to all residents including Jews, they accepted the term. The Arab population did not, they identified by tribe and religion.
Massacres by Hagenah- there were dreadful killings of civilian Arabs by Jews in the war tho' massacres of Jews by Arabs started earlier under British supervision.
WD says- 'The declaration of the State of Israel, accepting the UN partition plan when the Palestinians rejected it--a step that had no international support except from the American Zionists'.
My comment- Yes, the Israelis accepted the UN partition plan, declared a state, then the Arabs armies invaded. Yes American Zionists supported, but not the US government, international support was from the committee of non-aligned states who devised the boundary and ratified by the UN which at the time was not dominated by an Islamic block. US, UK and other western governments were hostile perhaps not from the anti-semitism alluded to by Morris but from the need for Saudi oil. The so-called political pull of British and American Zionists existed only in WD's special sources.
WD refers to areas of land but makes an assumption- the area occupied by Jews was small, therefore the area occupied by Arabs was large, wrong, as much land was empty, being desert, uninhabited scrub and swamp. As for property rights, few Arabs owned land which was generally owned by absentee Turkish landlords except for uninhabited areas. The Jews bought land and reclaimed desert and swamp. The state of Israel respected property rights, for example the government area is still owned by the orthodox church.
The case put by WD on the objections to Zionists living in Israel as they have not done it before is interesting, it invites comparison with mass population movements from Europe, and of course with Islamic expansions. Of course the bible is not considered at all, written by the Zionists in 1947 perhaps.
Well, not all take the bible as accurate in history or geography, but it is evidence. Likewise the findings of extensive activity of the Israeli national hobby of archeology. Likewise the extensive Islamist activity of destruction of historic sites, the Buddha statues the best known example. The PA has destroyed important sites that were protected by handover agreements.
To conclude- WD attempts to make a point by quoting from the writer Benny Morris. I have found quotes from Morris that do not support the claim. Several statements made in the postings are wrong or misleading, Perhaps the motivation is to be found in a quote from Morris given above, else it makes no sense to put this topic on an Atlas Shrugged website.
Thanks to WD for introducing me to Pamela Geller whose site is now in my favorites.
I return the favor by recommending another ethnic Jew whose views are more consistently anti-Israel - Noam Chomsky. Should WD not want to exercise this racial preference there are a plethora of alternatives, in my country they are mostly green, left.
For a brilliant and the most beautifully written article on this subject see
http://www.arabnews.com/arab-spring-and-...
by Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, journalist on the Saudi Arab News.
Disclaimer- in the preparation of this post no harm was suffered by Arab citizens of Israel who variously-
sit in parliament and on the highest court of the nation,
are respected in their fields such as science or diplomacy,
are footballers and pop-singers adulated by Israeli fans,
support and practice communism, capitalism, homosexuality, and the violin.
A story from my country: a group of the green slime were protesting outside a Jewish owned Melbourne cafe. A photo caught the protesters outside and showed in the outdoor seating area three women wearing hijabs enjoying their hot chocolates.
(In my city, we had a chance to perv at Dolly Parton last night!)
I look forward to contributions on other subjects by WD which I expect to be of good quality.
But this point is unfair to Maph whose comments, one or two are good, cover several subjects.
Tho' sneering at the UN is fine, the implication is that national birth certificates are to be issued only by, say, Greenpeace.
In accord with leftist/Islamist terminology, the term West Bank is used, this is a new invention for geographic areas correctly termed Judea and Sumeria.
There has never been a sovereign independent State covering Judea and Samaria other than a Jewish Commonwealth.
"The Arab nations did expel many, many Jews--an unjustified, collectivist response--but did so in anger at the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. In that case, Israel sinned first, the Arab nations in response."
Wrong- the expulsion of Jews from Arab nations was from thirst for property by looting mobs appeased and supported by the governments. This was the time when European governments (UK, France, Italy) gave way to selected flunkies who in turn gave way to popularists.
Arabs left the area under persuasion from terrorists such as Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini the friend of Hitler who told them to get out of the way of the invading armies.
Across the new Arab states of North Africa Jews were driven from land of greater area than the size of the current state of Israel.
Pamela Geller- I cannot see referred to in this thread except by WD.
Well on this and many other subjects I have not consulted the writings of Idi Amin, Yasser Arrafat, Husseini, Abadinjad, Benny Morris, Chomsky, nor the NY Times and many more.
Resurrecting the Myth:
Benny Morris, the Zionist Movement, and the ‘Transfer’ Idea
Abstract:
The accusation that the Zionist movement had a pre-arranged plan to ‘transfer’ the Palestinian Arab population out of Palestine, and that this took place during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, has been a staple of Arab anti-Zionist propaganda for over half a century. In its most recent manifestation it has been an important argument of the group of Israeli historians – who labelled themselves ‘New Historians’ – who have championed the Arab cause. This article examines the accusations made by leading ‘New Historian’ Benny Morris regarding Zionist ‘Transfer Policy’ in his recently-published expanded version of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947–1949. It systematically shows how Morris has distorted the public and private positions of a number of leading Zionist leaders on the issue of ‘Transfer’ – from Theodor Herzl to Arthur Rupin and from Chaim Weizmann to David Ben-Gurion. It also places the issue of ‘Transfer’ in its correct historical context in order to underline that this concept, so central to the arguments of champions of the Arab cause, was never part of Zionist ideology or practical politics.
* * * * * * * * *
Having found no evidence in support of the standard Arab claim that the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) entered the 1948 war with a master plan to expel the Arabs, or that its political and military leaders had ever adopted such a plan, Morris was forced to conclude that the Palestinian dispersal ‘was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab’.3
Yet he claimed that by the mid-1930s the Zionist leaders had despaired of achieving a Jewish majority in Palestine through mass immigration and had instead come to view the expulsion of the Arab population – or ‘transfer’, as it came to be known – as the best means ‘to establish a Jewish state without an Arab minority, or with as small an Arab minority as possible’.4 In reality, the archives show that rather than seek the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs, the Zionist leaders believed that there was
sufficient room in Palestine for both peoples to live side by side in peace and equality, and that, far from despairing by the mid-1930s of mass Jewish immigration, they worried about the country’s short-term absorptive capacity should millions of Jews enter Palestine.
Once these facts were publicly exposed,5 Morris grudgingly conceded that his ‘treatment of [Zionist] transfer thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial’ and that he had occasionally ‘stretched the evidence’ to make his point.6 But then, instead of acknowledging the implications of these severe methodological flaws for the content and conclusions of his research, in a whole new chapter in the recently-published expanded version of The Birth he attempted to prove what was trumpeted as one of the book’s foremost innovations, that ‘the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology’ and can be traced all the way back to the founding father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl.7
For all his bravado, Morris seems less than convinced of his new thesis. ‘The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors and initiatives’, he writes, highlighting a contradiction in his thesis that the idea was ‘inbuilt into Zionism’.8
While, in an implicit acknowledgment of their inaccuracy,
Morris removed some of The Birth’s most celebrated quotes about population transfer whose authenticity and accuracy were challenged by this author,9 he nevertheless reverts to the problematic technique of relying on a small number of Zionist statements either ripped out of context or simply misrepresented. If Morris actually believes that ‘the evidence for pre-1948 Zionist support for “Transfer” really is unambiguous’,10 there is surely
no need for distorting the historical record.
The Fight Over '1948'
By EFRAIM KARSH | May 1, 2008
The New York Sun
". . . And herein lies the major problem with Mr. Morris's canon of work. He has no problem expressing such wildly discrepant views and is willing to disregard not only the historical facts but his own past claims in the process without ever bothering to bring forward any new evidence. All this provides further proof, if such were needed, of the lack of seriousness of his writings. Twenty-one years ago, ***while on the left of the political spectrum***, he distorted the available evidence so he could blame Zionism for 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.' Now he has come to believe that had the Jews 'gone the whole hog,' that is, expelled all Arabs from Palestine in 1948, 'today's Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place.'
Of course, the Zionists never had any intention of doing such a thing, and his speculation is ahistorical. The evidence hasn't changed; only Mr. Morris has changed. And so one can only speculate as to what Mr. Morris's next book on the subject is going to argue. By then, his opinion as to where the blame lies in the Israel-Palestine conflict may well have changed once more, and if '1948' tells us anything, it is that Mr. Morris will have no problem in finding the 'facts' to back up whatever his political convictions demand at that time."
* * * * *
Donway once claimed to have a problem accepting the "Israeli narrative" of history, yet he certainly has no problem swallowing whole the political left's narrative of history.
Benny Morris (who always considered himself a leftist) has some interesting things to say about Palestinian Arab society and Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morri...
"On the subject of Israel's Arab citizens, Morris in 2004 argued:
'Palestinian society is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers… Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another. The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified…'"
The mid-June 1948 estimate of the prominent Arab leader, Emile Ghouri, of the number of refugees was 200,000.
www.meforum.org/2875/how-many-palestinia...
My reason is to show how the numbers from Arab sources were chosen to suit some current purpose rather than objective best estimates. At that time they wanted to minimize, now the opposite.
(MT. By the way, your writing has improved, more succinct)
See:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso...
"The Palestinians left their homes in 1947–49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947–49. The last census taken by the British in 1945 found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 census conducted by the government of Israel counted 160,000 Arabs living in the new state after the
war. In 1947, a total of 809,100 Arabs lived in the same area.(1) This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower
refugee figure—472,000.(2)"
(1) Arieh Avneri, The Claim of Dispossesion, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 272; Benjamin Kedar, The Changing Land Between the Jordan and the Sea, (Israel: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1999), p. 206; Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, (NY: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 529. Efraim Karsh analyzed rural and urban population statistics and concluded the total number of refugees was 583,000–609,000. Karsh, “How Many Palestinian Refugees Were There?” Israel Affairs, (April 2011).
(2) Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records: Third Session, Supplement No. 11 (A/648), Paris, 1948, p. 47 and Supplement No. 11A (A/689 and A/689/Add.1, p. 5; and “Conclusions from Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine,” (September 16, 1948), U.N. doc. A/648 (part 1, p. 29; part 2, p. 23; part 3, p. 11), (September 18, 1948).
Arab sources at the time put the number of Arab refugees at 250,000. The pre-war Jewish population of Bagdad alone was half a million, all those who wanted were accepted into Israel. Very few Arab refugees were accepted by any Arab country including those who encouraged the evacuation, some still have laws preventing them from land ownership.
The camps and the areas now known as Palestine receive little support from Arab nations but lavish funding from the UN and Europe so much so that while there is little industry -apart from firing weapons- the living standard is well above that of the poorest nations. Worth mentioning there is some market garden produce, some exported via Israeli companies to Europe where the boycott movement hates this cooperation as much as they hate Jews thus inflicting unemployment on Arabs.
Partition- the boundaries of the British protectorate of Palestine extended beyond what is now Israel, Gaza, Sumeria, and Judea and covered Jordan and parts of what now other neighboring nations. Jordan was split off with the intention of being the Arab ruled part, this was insufficient for their demands and a further split was designed by a group of small non-aligned nations. The area allotted to Israel was very small, but was reluctantly accepted. The surrounding Arab states did not even accept that, there was no talk of Palestine then, the neighbors wanted more land for themselves when they invaded.
Israel has taken in refugees who were expelled or escaped from Arab states, and has taken refugees from Africa and Vietnam. The Arabs in Gaza etc are people too, their predicament is not entirely of their own making. The contributions of anti-Semites and some commentators here make things worse for everyone.
* * * * * * * *
>>>for the hundreds of thousands of refugees still out there
Out of which hat did you pull that number? Today there are about 5 million refugees that the pro-Palestinian-Arab faction insists Israel repatriate, resettle, and compensate.
These 5 million are the descendants of the original 475K-650K Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 after it declared statehood. Most of them had been Arabs living in Jewish-controlled areas, and though urged to stay in Israel by Israel authorities, they fled for fear of reprisals by *Arab* authorities, lest their remaining in Israel be interpreted as a sign of de facto approval of "Jewish occupation."
And that is still very much the reason that refugees today will not agree to return, even IF resettlement were offered (which it won't be). But even IF it were offered, the refugees would find yet some other reason not to return ("Now we want East Jerusalem back." "OK, you've given us that; now we want the Golan Heights back." "Now we want the West Bank." etc.)
The irony is that had the Arabs simply accepted partition in 1948, they would already have had their own State of Palestine for over 60 years. They blew it.
As the old saying goes: "The Palestinian Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
>>>Justice today, wherever it lies, depends upon some agreement about what happened in the past.
Indeed. Arab historians themselves were agreed on the causes of their refugee problem until long after 1948, when the purely political advantages of inverting the accepted narrative were grasped: the advantages being this, "Hey, there's a whole new bunch superficially educated western journalists and self-styled intellectuals, mainly of a leftist bent, who will respond favorably to us if we make it appear that WE are the victims and the Jews are the aggressors."
Arafat played a great role in this, inventing the idea of a "Palestinian NATION," with its own "indigenous Palestinian people", and a specific "Palestinian culture", etc. (all fabrication).
I should also mention that IF Israel ever agreed to a "right of return" for the millions of Palestinian Arab refugees, it would also be based on demands for compensation by Arab nations for the right of return of the 800,000+ Jews expelled from Arab countries after Israeli independence was declared in 1948. Those 800,000+ have also become a few million today, though you've never heard of them, Donway — want to know why? Because instead of festering their hatred of their Arab expellers in Jewish refugee camps, they moved to Israel (some to Europe, some to the US), and decided not to live as refugees.
Arabs might consider doing the same.