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On this day, 1947

• Message 1. 

  Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Tuesday, 20th December 2011

  On this day, December 1947.
  
  Despite British Army attempts to arrest known Zionist terrorists (see text and photo, p270, in Morris, B. “1948” as 2,below), militant Jewish settlers in Palestine escalated their campaign of ethnic cleansing of Arab Palestinians, sixty-four years ago today.
  
  The first villages to be hit were Deir Ayyub and Beit Affa. The Irgun and Hagana followed a strategy advanced some years earlier by Orde Wingate.
  Ben Gurion had approved the plan a few days before and Hagana ‘special units’ began the systematic intimidation of Arabs from their homes. The wealthy middle class Arab families were chosen as the first victims as it was thought, quite correctly, that they had most options and the strongest influence on others. Any resistance to such operations:-
  “usually ended with Jewish troops firing at random and killing several villagers” (Pappe , 2006, see 1, below, p55).
  Jewish militant groups distributed leaflets around the Palestinian villages on the Syrian and Lebanese borders which threatened:
  
  “The war will be taken to your place. It will cause massive expulsion…there will be merciless killing, no compassion” (Pappe, 1, ibid, p56)
  
  This is obviously an example of ‘terrorism’ as defined by such diverse sources as Michael Neuman (2005) , Donald Rumsfeld and Noam Chomsky.
  
  Reports of these Hagana ‘special unit’ actions soon reached the ear of the Bishop of Jerusalem, as the Christians for whom he believed himself responsible were themselves reluctant to stay in areas under Jewish threat. (see P. Emory, 4, below). He was most distressed. (see his reports from the Jerusalem and East Mission, 5, below)
  The Hagana was in a difficult position. One branch of the organisation felt obliged to offer half-hearted condemnation of such behaviour, describing such actions as: “Spectacular acts to gratify popular feeling” (see Gilbert, 9, p 154, below). While within the organisation itself these actions were known euphemistically as “Violent reconnaissance”.
  
  The more militant Zionist (6)‘Irgun’ (irgun zvai leumi) and Stern Gang (lohamei herut yisrael) were far more direct in their language of terror:
  Almost immediately they reacted with “indiscriminate terror” to any resistance from the local population (Morris, 2, below, p100). “Enough of restraint” said the IZL (Voice of Fighting Zion, or Irgun radio)
  
  Needless to say, these bullying actions by the Irgun, Stern Gang and Hagana in Palestine led to revenge attacks on the Jewish populations of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, (The �鶹Լ��’s Alan Yentob wrote an excellent programme about the fate of the Iraqi Jews, at:
  )
  
  These anti-Jewish riots led, in turn, to an escalation of Irgun anti-Arab actions back in Palestine (See Gilbert, 9, below, p 154). Thus, specifically anti-Zionist actions of self preservation by Palestinian Arabs from 1900 to 1948 became a generalised anti-semitism which is a common currency in most Muslim lands today. Just as anti-Arab attitudes are ubiquitous, if not de rigeur, in some parts of the USA since 9/11.
  
  It is worth bearing in mind that before the mass emigration of Russian/Polish/Ukrainian Jews to Palestine, because of the late 19th Century pogroms, long-established communities of middle eastern Jews and Arabs rubbed along fairly peacefully. Jews had risen to positions of considerable power in the Ottoman Empire.
  
  Notes and References:
  For evidence that the 1947 Jewish ethnic cleansing of Arab Palestinians was planned and not simply “spontaneous”, see:
  1) Pappe, I (2006) “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. One World Publications. Oxford.
  And
  2) Morris, B. (2008) “1948” Yale University Press. Pp 94 and 436. Benny Morris was originally sympathetic to the Palestinian account of 1890-1948. His later work has been much more ‘Zionist’ in orientation. (‘1948’, from which I quote here, won the Jewish Book Award in 2008)
  3) Avi Shlaim (2009) ‘Israel and Palestine’ describes Benny Morris’s volte face as a ‘betrayal of history’ (p 361, ibid).
  For evidence that Christians, as well as Muslim Arabs, were under pressure to move in the face of Jewish settler demands, see the:
  4)St. Anthony’s College Middle East Centre Archive, especially P. Emory to Bishop of Jerusalem letter, 13th December 1947, and
  5) Jerusalem and East Mission papers, no. 71 (part 2).
  6) Zionism rests on a pseudo-history which muddles biblical land claims with modern politics. For those who regard history as written by humans, not ‘Gods’, see a wonderfully subtle and scholarly demolition of ‘ancient-roots’ Zionism in:
  7) “Land of Our Fathers. The role of ancestor veneration in biblical land claims”(2010) by Professor Franscesa Stavrakopolou. Library of Biblical Studies.
  For a critique of ‘biological Zionism’ (the notion that ‘Judaism’ constitutes a distinct biologic genomic ‘national’ identity) see:
  8) Shlomo Sand “The Invention of the Jewish People” (2009) . Verso.
  9) Martin Gilbert’s “Israel” (1998) is a worthwhile overview of Palestine/Israel from a mildly pro-Jewish perspective. It is well-written and easy to read but should not be regarded as a complete and final history of the era as many new sources have come to light since Gilbert wrote his book.
  Gilbert is good on the ‘tit for tat’ unravelling of the Arab/Israeli catastrophe. In this context, of the 1947 undeclared Arab –Jewish war, see especially chapter 9; pages 153 -169.
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Wednesday, 21st December 2011

  'Both Sides of the Hill' by Jon and David Kimche was written from a pro-Zionist perspective by two eye-witnesses. However, the book does debunk any myths about Zionism trying to 'free' Palestine from British rule. The terrorist activity directed at the British by Zionist forces was, according to the authors, in order to 'demonstrate to the British military authorities that without the goodwill of Palestinian Jewry, the British forces in Israel might be dangerously isolated'.
  
  The British did, of course, leave in 1948, by which time Zionism was aligned more forcefully with the US, and for a time, with Russia. And 1956 was to see another alignment with Britain, alongside France over the Suez - the strategic factor that had underpinned the 1917 Balfour Declaration (as Abba Eban later said, 'We helped the British, the British helped us')
  
  Consideration of the geo-politics should not, of course, take attention away from the immense human suffering that followed, principally by Palestinian Arabs.

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Wednesday, 21st December 2011

  'Both Sides of the Hill' by Jon and David Kimche 
  
  I've not read that. I'll check it it out.
  
  The terrorist activity directed at the British by Zionist forces was, according to the authors, in order to 'demonstrate to the British military authorities that without the goodwill of Palestinian Jewry, the British forces in Israel might be dangerously isolated'.  
  
  The British didn't really take Zionist terrorism that seriously until the King David Hotel bombing of 1946, imho.
  
  These actions split the American press and public and became important to Truman too, for obvious reasons, as his election date came closer.
  
  Ben Hecht (Hollywood screenwriter; "Scarface") publicly praised the Irgun and Stern Gang for blowing-up British ordnance and killing British troops: "It makes a little holiday in my heart". His letters on this theme were widely read in the major US Daily papers of the late 40's.
  
  But when Menachem Begin (former head of Irgun) visited the US in November 1948 as leader of the Israeli right-wing Herut party, his particular brand of ultra-Zionism was criticised most strongly by the very well respected Jews Albert Einstein, Sydney Hook and Hannah Arendt who chided many influential Americans for honouring a man :
  
  "Whose party is closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties"
  The letter also accused the Herut group (along with the smaller, militant, Stern Gang) of preaching "racial superiority" and having "inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community".
  
  (From Lilienthal, Alfred M., (1978) The Zionist Connection, What Price Peace?, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, pp.350
  
  
  
  

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• Message 4

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Thursday, 22nd December 2011

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• Message 5

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Thursday, 22nd December 2011

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Thursday, 22nd December 2011

  On November 3rd this year Sarkozy called Netanyahu a liar…
  Who is the anti-Semite in this exchange?
  
  
  
  You seem utterly lost when one famous Jew falls out with another.
  
  Surely, in your simplistic world, anyone who says nasty things about any Jew must be a "Jew -baiter"?
  

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Thursday, 22nd December 2011

  I'll leave the last word to Ilan Pappe..
  
  
  

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