Yes, they will confirm what your Opposition says, because the facts are on our side. (And what are doing with that link ... ?)

That's why you have to resort to insult instead of addressing the issues, Plant.

only a tiny fraction of jews are the traitorful anti-zionist Jews, for example only 500 known members are of the neturei-karta anti-zionist sect in London.

so approximately over 90% of Jews in the UK and USA are Zionists and many are true zionists - right wing religious zionists like myself

just because you can't accept the Jews have a homeland and no-one has ever won a war against them and the co0mmunists never win anyhting. A bunch of poor, unemplyoed sad shits you are

It's always funny when "liberal progressives" support fundamentalist nutcases...
Like the moslems who enjoy blowing people up

Guys, try and get a grip on reality. Extreme nationalism is a sickness of the mind. Grow up please.

Bring out the pet Jews

What's wrong with Zionism? I thought it means supporting the right of Israel to exist? Well, I jolly well don't support the current, or previous, Israeli administrations in their violence, except when they acted in self-defence against surrounding countries' armed invasion in 1967. I don't support their treatment of Palestians, their slaughter of innocent civilians in Lebanon and Palestine, their total paranoia and war-like attitudes. But I jolly well do support Israel's current right to exist because it does exist. The Holocaust was real, not imaginary. Yes, millions of Gypsys journalists, writers, musicians, comedians, trade unionists, communists, jehovahs witnesses dies as well. But, apart from the poor Gypsies, they were not racial groups. They were anyone supporting the Jewish people, against whom the hatred was invariably directly directed. they were the people standing up for the oppressed, not the oppressed themselves.

How many jewish people, in 1949, would have willingly gone back to germany? It may have been a terrible delusion on the part of these genocided people to think that, by taking other people's land, they could ever find peace. It was a delusion not shared by their war leaders, who knew that they would have to fight for every scrap of it. But they did go there, and most of them tried to live in peace, and they reclaimed the desert, and made kibbutzes, and other beautiful, well-meaning things as well.

So I find the current linking of Israel's terrible, deathly, destructive behaviour with the right of Israeli people to live in what has become their homes very worrying. What do people who are "anti Zionist" suggest? Forcible ejection of all Israelis? A quick death? Or what?

Zionism is an ideology just like marxism, facism or any other ism you care to mention
you are all the dumbfuck idiots of the ruling class.
Zionist puppets marxist puppets, all idiots.

Zionists are there to destabilise the ME
marxists are there to control deeent

Oh yeah Truman the messiah ha! Oh yeah Engels not a capitalist Ha!

You've all been had! Wake up! and fight the ruling class and not each other.

"So I find the current linking of Israel's terrible, deathly, destructive behaviour with the right of Israeli people to live in what has become their homes very worrying"

All fine and dandy, but Israel's neighbors keep attacking.
This last go round if you recall involved Hamas kidnapping a soldier and firing kassams at israel ever since they withdrew from gaza.
At the same time, hezbollah (who has been firing missiles at israel ever since they withdrew from Lebanon) kidnapped tow Israeli soldiers.
The proper response according to some is for Israel to do nothing, allow hamas and hezbollah to fire missiles at civilian areas and sit around wringing their hands...It ain't gonna hjappen Abdullah.

Zionists claim that Jews have the right to possess all land between the Nile and the Euphrates because (they say) this land was given to them by some entity they call "YHWH" as claimed in the Old Testament (Genesis 15:18). But this would not be the first time that documents written by humans were used to justify land grabs. (And this "YHWH" appears, from accounts in the Old Testament, to be a particularly repulsive entity, vain, jealous, given to fits of rage and directing his followers to massacre civilian populations — an entity who, if he existed, would be quite unworthy of the devotion of anyone with a sense of justice and morality.)

Zionists also lay claim to Palestine because this was territory controlled by two Jewish mini-states, Judah and Samaria, until their destruction by the Romans in the 1st C. CE. To which may be replied: If Zionist claims to a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, based on Jewish occupation of that area 2000 years ago, are accepted as valid then the claims of North American Indians to their former homeland (all of the United States) and the claims of Australian Aborigines to their former homeland (all of Australia) should also be accepted as valid, and those homelands returned. Not to mention the descendants of the inhabitants of countless mini-states which have risen and fallen over the course of thousands of years of human history. Jews have no more rights than anyone else.

"NAZIONISM"

Now, THAT's what I call clever!!!
We must stand neck to scimitar with the members of the Religion of Peace (TM)
(If you give them what they want, they promise to allow you to keep your head)

The Plant(s) is nervous, because he knows that Anti-Zionism is sweeping through the Jewish Community worldwide, where Zionist Extremism is but a small minority, but has inserted itself into much of Organized Jewry, claiming to represent the will of Jews everywhere.

People who have to resort to such deception know they support the indefensible ...

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The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
THIRD EDITION (including Intifada 2000)
PUBLISHED BY JEWS FOR JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must
come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both
sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth
listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland
for over a thousand years was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during creation
of the state of Israel. And all subsequent crimes - on both sides - inevitably follow from this
original injustice.
This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral
solution to the region's problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle
East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the
historical record.
Introduction
The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to
reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish
community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian
Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then
forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to
today.
The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in
this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the
beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab
population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought
by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold
or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).
The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously
opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent
danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire
Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The
vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh
century A.D. (Over 1200 years)
In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous
inhabitants didn't matter. The Arabs' opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but
rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.
One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but
is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group
might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish
people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be
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masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger
to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930's and after, the actions of the Zionists were
propelled by real desperation.
But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic "land without people for a people without land"
was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall
see.
Early History of the Region
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of Canaan was
occupied by Canaanites.
"Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West
Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after
the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and
vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians,
Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes." Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, "Their
Promised Land."
The present-day Palestinians' ancestral heritage
"But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto
the parent tree...And that parent tree was Canaanite...[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.]
made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them,
with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites
leave off and the Arabs begin." Illene Beatty, "Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan."
The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine
"The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial
demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence
to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David's conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C.
to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule." Illene Beatty,
"Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan."
More on Canaanite civilization
"Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city
already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to
the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than
imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire
system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800
BCE." The Jewish Bulletin, July 31st, 1998.
How long has Palestine been a specifically Arab country?
"Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century.
Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics - including its name in
Arabic, Filastin - became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty
as for its religious significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire,
but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty percent of the population was in
agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group.
All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings
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that they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of
Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately
preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a
huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of
1,033,314." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it change?
"[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of
agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly
been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally
masha'a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be
deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on
it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the
provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of
the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas
of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often
discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish
settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators
were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in
Palestine." Rashid Khalidi, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens
Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real
sense of danger to their community?
"The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was `to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable
possession of the Jewish people.'...As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha'am wrote that the
Arabs "understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at'...[Theodore
Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] `We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population
across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it
employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor
must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly'...At various locations in northern Palestine
Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the
Turkish authorities, at the Fund's request, evicted them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also
reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did
not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A
Challenge to Justice."
Inherent anti-Semitism? - continued
"Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had
settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them
and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the
1880's...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the
peasants who had cultivated it." Don Peretz, "The Arab-Israeli Dispute."
Inherent anti-Semitism? - continued
"[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and
a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere...In the Holy Land...they lived together
in [relative] harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine
was the 'rightful' possession of the 'Jewish people' to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian
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inhabitants." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Jews attitude towards Arabs when reaching Palestine.
"Serfs they (the Jews) were in the lands of the Diaspora, and suddenly they find themselves in
freedom [in Palestine]; and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They
treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause,
and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous
inclination." Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Proposals for Arab-Jewish Cooperation
"An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in 1907...called for a new Zionist policy
towards the Arabs after 30 years of settlement activity...Like Ahad-Ha'am in 1891, Epstein
claims that no good land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession...Epstein's
solution to the problem, so that a new "Jewish question" may be avoided, is the creation of a bi-
national, non-exclusive program of settlement and development. Purchasing land should not
involve the dispossession of poor sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming
community, where the Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries
should be non-exclusivist and education bilingual...The vision of non-exclusivist, peaceful
cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few takers. Epstein was maligned and
scorned for his faintheartedness." Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
Was Palestine the only, or even preferred, destination of Jews facing persecution when the
Zionist movement started?
"The pogroms forced many Jews to leave Russia. Societies known as 'Lovers of Zion,' which
were forerunners of the Zionist organization, convinced some of the frightened emigrants to go
to Palestine. There, they argued, Jews would rebuild the ancient Jewish 'Kingdom of David and
Solomon,' Most Russian Jews ignored their appeal and fled to Europe and the United States. By
1900, almost a million Jews had settled in the United States alone." "Our Roots Are Still Alive"
by The People Press Palestine Book Project.
The British Mandate Period
1920-1948
The Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
"The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British Government...was made a) by
a European power, b) about a non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence
and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory...[As Balfour himself wrote in 1919],
'The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo French Declaration of 1918
promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies
they could have their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation
of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose
even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the
country...The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or
bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import
than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land,'" Edward
Said, "The Question of Palestine."
Wasn't Palestine a wasteland before the Jews started immigrating there?
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"Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of
Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said 'all cultivable land
was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be
sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators'...The Colonial Office rejected
the recommendation." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Were the early Zionists planning on living side by side with Arabs?
In 1919, the American King-Crane Commission spent six weeks in Syria and Palestine,
interviewing delegations and reading petitions. Their report stated, "The commissioners began
their study of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor...The fact came out repeatedly in the
Commission's conferences with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a
practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various
forms of purchase...
"If [the] principle [of self-determination] is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population
are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the
non-Jewish population of Palestine - nearly nine-tenths of the whole - are emphatically against
the entire Zionist program.. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and
to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the
principle just quoted...No British officers, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the
Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms.The officers generally thought that
a force of not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program.
That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program...The initial
claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on
occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered." Quoted in "The
Israel-Arab Reader" ed. Laquer and Rubin.
Side by side - continued
"Zionist land policy was incorporated in the Constitution of the Jewish Agency for
Palestine...'land is to be acquired as Jewish property and..the title to the lands acquired is to be
taken in the name of the Jewish National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the
inalienable property of the Jewish people.' The provision goes to stipulate that 'the Agency shall
promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor'...The effect of this Zionist colonization
policy on the Arabs was that land acquired by Jews became extra-territorialized. It ceased to be
land from which the Arabs could ever hope to gain any advantage...
"The Zionists made no secret of their intentions, for as early as 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the
Zionist Commission, boldly told the Court of Inquiry, 'there can be only one National Home in
Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but
a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased.' He then
asked that only Jews should be allowed to bear arms." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Given Arab opposition to them, did the Zionists support steps towards majority rule in
Palestine?
"Clearly, the last thing the Zionists really wanted was that all the inhabitants of Palestine should
have an equal say in running the country... [Chaim] Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that
representative government would have spelled the end of the [Jewish] National Home in
Palestine... [Churchill declared,] 'The present form of government will continue for many years.
Step by step we shall develop representative institutions leading to full self-government, but our
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children's children will have passed away before that is accomplished.'" David Hirst, "The Gun
and the Olive Branch."
Denial of the Arabs' right to self-determination
"Even if nobody lost their land, the [Zionist] program was unjust in principle because it denied
majority political rights... Zionism, in principle, could not allow the natives to exercise their
political rights because it would mean the end of the Zionist enterprise." Benjamin Beit-
Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism
"In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a nationalist revolt... David Ben-Gurion, eminently a
realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that 'in our political argument
abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,' but he urged, 'let us not ignore the truth among
ourselves.' The truth was that 'politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The
country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in
their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside'... The revolt
was crushed by the British, with considerable brutality." Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Gandhi on the Palestine conflict - 1938
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France
to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of
conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is
wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with
the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the
Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no
wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-
violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their
country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the
Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in "A Land of Two
Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr.
Didn't the Zionists legally buy much of the land before Israel was established?
"In 1948, at the moment that Israel declared itself a state, it legally owned a little more than 6
percent of the land of Palestine...After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land
ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and selling)
within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was announced in 1947 it included land held illegally by Jews,
which was incorporated as a fait accompli inside the borders of the Jewish state. And after Israel
announced its statehood, an impressive series of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land
(whose proprietors had become refugees, and were pronounced 'absentee landlords' in order to
expropriate their lands and prevent their return under any circumstances)." Edward Said, "The
Question of Palestine."
The UN Partition of Palestine
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Why did the UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab
state?
"By this time [November 1947] the United States had emerged as the most aggressive proponent
of partition...The United States got the General Assembly to delay a vote 'to gain time to bring
certain Latin American republics into line with its own views.'...Some delegates charged U.S.
officials with 'diplomatic intimidation.' Without 'terrific pressure' from the United States on
'governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals,' said an anonymous editorial
writer, the resolution 'would never have passed.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A
Challenge to Justice."
Why was this Truman's position?
"I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the
success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
President Harry Truman, quoted in "Anti Zionism", ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
"Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be
[only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews
were to be established as the ruling body - a settlement which no self-respecting people would
accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the
basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of
all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds
majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its
own charter." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of
Israel's society - including...Ben-Gurion - were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition
and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders
beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians." Israeli
historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
Public vs private pronouncements on this question.
"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after we become a strong force,
as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of
Palestine'...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It
will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement
is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz
Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever." Noam
Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
The war begins
"In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15,
1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting
broke out in Jerusalem's streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out
war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on
Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by
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the People Press Palestine Book Project.
Zionists' disrespect of partition boundaries
"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states,
the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had
occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on
April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of
Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In
contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state
under the partition resolution." British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."
Culpability for escalation of the fighting
"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the
first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was
carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance
through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began
with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second
phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place
prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter
Harvest."
The Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers
"For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold
and premeditated fashion...The attackers 'lined men, women and children up against the walls
and shot them,'...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion
alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians
from their homes all over the country." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
Was Deir Yassin the only act of its kind?
"By 1948, the Jew was not only able to 'defend himself' but to commit massive atrocities as well.
Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, 'in almost every village
occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war
crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes'...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military
historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that 'every skirmish ended in a
massacre of Arabs.'" Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
Statehood and Expulsion
1948
What was the Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of the state of Israel?
"The armies of the Arab states entered the war immediately after the State of Israel was founded
in May. Fighting continued, almost all of it within the territory assigned to the Palestinian
state...About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 conflict." Noam Chomsky,
"The Fateful Triangle."
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Was the part of Palestine assigned to a Jewish state in mortal danger from the Arab
armies?
"The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send regular army troops into
Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under
the partition plan. But these regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to
coordinate their efforts...[Jordan's King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis and the British] that his
troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting force among the Arab armies, would avoid
fighting with Jewish settlements...Yet Western historians record this as the moment when the
young state of Israel fought off "the overwhelming hordes' of five Arab countries. In reality, the
Israeli offensive against the Palestinians intensified." "Our Roots Are Still Alive," by the Peoples
Press Palestine Book Project.
Ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
"Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund...On December 19, 1940, he
wrote: 'It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country...The Zionist
enterprise so far...has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with 'land buying' - but
this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a
Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the
Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem,
Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe'...There were
literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists." Edward Said, "The Question of
Palestine."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader was able to conceive of future
coexistence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples - achievable only by
transfer and expulsion. Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the
violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public pose..Ben
Gurion summed up: 'With compulsory transfer we (would) have a vast area (for settlement)...I
support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it,'" Israel historian, Benny Morris,
"Righteous Victims."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to
see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and
October [1948]. But no [general] expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always
refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals
'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the 'great
expeller' and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable
policy...But while there was no 'expulsion policy', the July and October [1948] offensives were
characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first
half of the war." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"
Didn't the Palestinians leave their homes voluntarily during the 1948 war?
"Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was
'self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly concede that the Arab population fled as a result of
Israeli action - whether directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to the
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panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in Arab population centers
throughout Palestine. However, even though the historical record has been grudgingly set
straight, the Israeli establishment still refused to accept moral or political responsibility for the
refugee problem it- or its predecessors - actively created." Peretz Kidron, quoted in "Blaming the
Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Arab orders to evacuate non-existent
"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts
throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a United States monitoring unit, can be
seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about
evacuation from Palestine, from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948.
There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of
Palestine to stay put." Erskine Childers, British researcher, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter
Harvest."
Ethnic cleansing- continued
"That Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible
from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to
achieve his purpose...most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their
inhabitants...even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live
in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence." Israeli author, Simha
Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of Palestinians
"During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile
began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary
means of achieving this aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The
village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April... Abu
Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also
leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either
completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
After the fighting was over, why didn't the Palestinians return to their homes?
"The first UN General Assembly resolution--Number 194- affirming the right of Palestinians to
return to their homes and property, was passed on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no
less than twenty-eight times since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a
person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has
negated the possibility of return... [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any
grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in
Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli." Edward Said, "The Question of
Palestine."
Is there any justification for this expropriation of land?
"The fact that the Arabs fled in terror, because of real fear of a repetition of the 1948 Zionist
massacres, is no reason for denying them their homes, fields and livelihoods. Civilians caught in
an area of military activity generally panic. But they have always been able to return to their
homes when the danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property;
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nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate the homes, property and personal belongings of the
noncombatant civilian population. The seizure of Arab property by the Israelis was an outrage."
Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
How about the negotiations after the 1948-1949 wars?
"[At Lausanne,] Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians were trying to save by negotiations
what they had lost in the war--a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel, however... [preferred]
tenuous armistice agreements to a definite peace that would involve territorial concessions and
the repatriation of even a token number of refugees. The refusal to recognize the Palestinians'
right to self-determination and statehood proved over the years to be the main source of the
turbulence, violence, and bloodshed that came to pass." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth
Of Israel."
Israel admitted to UN but then reneged on the conditions under which it was admitted
"The [Lausanne] conference officially opened on 27 April 1949. On 12 May the [UN's] Palestine
Conciliation ,Committee reaped its only success when it induced the parties to sign a joint
protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace. . Israel for the first time accepted the
principle of repatriation [of the Arab refugees] and the internationalization of Jerusalem. . .[but]
they did so as a mere exercise in public relations aimed at strengthening Israel's international
image...Walter Eytan, the head of the Israeli delegation, [stated]..'My main purpose was to begin
to undermine the protocol of 12 May, which we had signed only under duress of our struggle for
admission to the U.N. Refusal to sign would...have immediately been reported to the Secretary-
General and the various governments.'" Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Making of the Arab-
Israel Conflict, 1947-1951."
Israeli admission to the U.N.- continued
"The Preamble of this resolution of admission included a safeguarding clause as follows:
'Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on partition) and 11 December 1948 (on
reparation and compensation), and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the
representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of
the implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly...decides to admit Israel into
membership in the United Nations.'
"Here, it must be observed, is a condition and an undertaking to implement the resolutions
mentioned. There was no question of such implementation being conditioned on the conclusion
of peace on Israeli terms as the Israelis later claimed to justify their non-compliance." Sami
Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
What was the fate of the Palestinians who had now become refugees?
"The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand
Palestinians, was cold and hard...Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift
tents...Many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and
orchards in occupied Palestine - the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations
finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take
over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only
barely." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
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The 1967 War and the Israeli Occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza
Did the Egyptians actually start the 1967 war, as Israel originally claimed?
"The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated
that there was 'no threat of destruction' but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was
nevertheless justified so that Israel could 'exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now
embodies.'...Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: 'In June 1967, we again had a
choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.' "Noam
Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Was the 1967 war defensive? - continued
"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been
sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief
of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde, 2/28/68
Moshe Dayan posthumously speaks out on the Golan Heights
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to
conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by
Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so
less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] 'They didn't even try to hide their greed
for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything,
in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't
shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get
annoyed and shoot.
And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians,
on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997
The history of Israeli expansionism
"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand
from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the
boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will
be able to limit them." David Ben-Gurion, in 1936, quoted in Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful
Triangle."
Expansionism - continued
"The main danger which Israel, as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to
its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable
series of wars resulting from this aim...No zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's
idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical considerations) on the
restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state." Israeli professor, Israel
Shahak, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
Expansionism - continued
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955
in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: "[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the
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only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this
end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-
and-revenge...And above all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may
finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred
Terrorism."
But wasn't the occupation of Arab lands necessary to protect Israel's security?
"Senator [J.William Fulbright] proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel's security
in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to
the borders of 1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby
bring the Soviet Union - then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs - into compliance.
As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force. Israel would agree to accept a certain
number of Palestinians and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.
"The plan drew favorable editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however, was
flatly rejected by Israel. 'The whole affair disgusted Fulbright,' writes [his biographer Randall]
Woods. 'The Israelis were not even willing to act in their own self-interest.'" Allan Brownfield in
"Issues of the American Council for Judaism." Fall 1997.[Ed.-This was one of many such
proposals]
What happened after the 1967 war ended?
"In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West
Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish
civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel's military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes
on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial
for various periods by Israeli security forces." Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli
Occupation," ed. Lockman and Beinin.
World opinion on the legality of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza.
"Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting
in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous
opinion that even if Israel's action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel's occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a 'serious and increasing threat to international
peace and security.' " John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Examples of the effects of Israeli occupation
"A study of students at Bethlehem University reported by the Coordinating Committee of
International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many families frequently go five days a week
without running water...The study goes further to report that, 'water quotas restrict usage by
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli settlers have almost unlimited
amounts.'
"A summer trip to a Jewish settlement on the edge of the Judean desert less than five miles from
Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us. While Bethlehemites were buying water from
tank trucks at highly inflated rates, the lawns were green in the settlement. Sprinklers were going
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at mid day in the hot August sunshine. Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor pool added
to the unreality." Betty Jane Bailey, in "The Link", December 1996.
Israeli occupation - continued
"You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or more have experienced -
some many, many times - the [Israeli] army breaking into the home, beating relatives, destroying
things. Many were beaten themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these
things happen to siblings and neighbors...The emotional aspect of the child is affected by the
[lack of] security. He needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does not. In our
research, we have found that children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in
their behaviors and, later, in their political beliefs." Dr Samir Quota, director of research for the
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in "The Journal of Palestine Studies,"
Summer 1996, p.84
Israeli occupation - continued
"There is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to a 35-year-old [Palestinian] man who
worked fifteen years as an illegal day laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house
for his family only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house and all
that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I asked why this was done - the
land, after all, was his - I was told that a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier
stated that he had built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people
required to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own property? Jews can build,
but never Palestinians. This is apartheid." Edward Said, in "The Nation", May 4, 1998.
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the
Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as
possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the
people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is
found in the convention's Article 49, which states, 'The occupying Power shall not deport or
transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'" John Quigley,
"Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Excerpts from the U.S. State Department's reports during the Intifada
"Following are some excerpts from the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices from 1988 to 1991:
1988: 'Many avoidable deaths and injuries' were caused because Israeli soldiers frequently used
gunfire in situations that did not present mortal danger to troops...IDF troops used clubs to break
limbs and beat Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting arrest..At
least thirteen Palestinians have been reported to have died from beatings...'
1989: Human rights groups charged that the plainclothes security personnel acted as death
squads who killed Palestinian activists without warning, after they had surrendered, or after they
had been subdued...
1991: [The report] added that the human rights groups had published 'detailed credible reports of
torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in prisons and detention centers."
Former Congressman Paul Findley, "Deliberate Deceptions."
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Jerusalem - Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel?
"Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the current
boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War. Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to
Central Command Chief Rehavan Ze'evi. The line he drew 'took in not only the five square
kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem - but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open country
and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became
part of Israel's eternal and indivisible capital.'" Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On
Middle East Affairs, May 2000.
The History of Terrorism in the Region
Editor's Note: We believe that the killing of innocent people is wrong, in all cases. Thus, we cannot
condone the use of terrorism by some extreme Palestinian groups, especially prevalent during the 1970s.
That being said, however, it is necessary to examine the context in which such incidents occurred.
We hear lots about Palestinian terrorism. How about the Israeli record?
"The record of Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the state - indeed, long before -
including the massacre of 250 civilians and brutal expulsion of seventy thousand others from
Lydda and Ramle in July 1948; the massacre of hundreds of others at the undefended village of
Doueimah near Hebron in October 1948;...the slaughters in Quibya, Kafr Kassem, and a string of
other assassinated villages; the expulsion of thousands of Bedouins from the demilitarized zones
shortly after the 1948 war and thousands more from northeastern Sinai in the early 1970's, their
villages destroyed, to open the region for Jewish settlement; and on, and on." Noam Chomsky,
"Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Terrorism - continued
"However much one laments and even wishes somehow to atone for the loss of life and suffering
visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence, there is still the need, I think, also to say
that no national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to
disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.
The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill
anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality. The devastation of Lebanese refugee
camps, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests,
deportations, house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West Bank and
Gaza..these, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical,
political and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded the damage done by
Palestinians to Israelis." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
The U.S. Government and media bias on terrorism in the Middle East
"It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel's history, its record - from the fact
that it..is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and
destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory
against international law - is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or
in official discourse...never addressed as playing any role at all in provoking 'Islamic terror.'"
Edward Said in "The Progressive." May 30, 1996.
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Jewish Criticism of Zionism
"Albert Einstein - "'I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of
living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations,
my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State,with borders,
an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner
damage Judaism will sustain'...
"Erich Fromm... [stated]...'In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen
loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which
the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since
when is that punishable by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the
land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to
the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territory in
which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse...I
believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral
acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs - not to use it as a bargaining
point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former
inhabitants of Palestine'...
"Martin Buber - 'Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their
murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then
will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable
Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose
homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens,
orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of
education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book"
and the "light of the nations"'...
"In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem)
is reported to have declared: 'The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will
gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is
diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic
entity. The Zionists say, in effect, 'Look here, God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if
you don't, we'll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back.' 'The Rabbi continues: 'This, of
course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to
the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.'" Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Jewish Criticism - continued
"A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even
though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with
understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should
fail." Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted in
"Like All The Nations?", ed. Brinner & Rischin.
Martin Buber on what Zionism should have been
"The first fact is that at the time when we entered into an alliance (an alliance, I admit, that was
not well defined) with a European state and we provided that state with a claim to rule over
Palestine, we made no attempt to reach an agreement with the Arabs of this land regarding the
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basis and conditions for the continuation of Jewish settlement.
This negative approach caused those Arabs who thought about and were concerned about the
future of their people to see us increasingly not as a group which desired to live in cooperation
with their people but as something in the nature of uninvited guests and agents of foreign
interests (at the time I explicitly pointed out this fact).
"The second fact is that we took hold of the key economic positions in the country without
compensating the Arab population, that is to say without allowing their capital and their labor a
share in our economic activity. Paying the large landowners for purchases made or paying
compensation to tenants on the land is not the same as compensating a people. As a result, many
of the more thoughtful Arabs viewed the advance of Jewish settlement as a kind of plot designed
to dispossess future generations of their people of the land necessary for their existence and
development. Only by means of a comprehensive and vigorous economic policy aimed at
organizing and developing common interests would it have been possible to contend with this
view and its inevitable consequences. This we did not do.
"The third fact is that when a possibility arose that the Mandate would soon be terminated, not
only did we not propose to the Arab population of the country that a joint Jewish Arab
administration be set up in its place, we went ahead and demanded rule over the whole country
(the Biltmore program) as a fitting political sequel to the gains we had already made. By this
step, we with our own hands provided our enemies in the Arab camp with aid and comfort of the
most valuable sort - the support of public opinion - without which the military attack launched
against us would not have been possible. For it now appears to the Arab populace that in carrying
on the activities we have been engaged in for years, in acquiring land and in working and
developing the land, we were systematically laying the ground work for gaining control of the
whole country." Martin Buber, quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr
Israel's new historians now refute myths of the founding of the state
"Since the 1980's,.....Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their Palestinian counterparts that
Zionism was...carried out as a pure colonialist act against the local population: a mixture of
exploitation and expropriation...
"They were motivated to present a revisionist point of view to a large extent by the
declassification of relevant archival material in Israel, Britain and the United States. [For
example,]...
Challenging the Myth of Annihilation - The new historiographical picture is a fundamental
challenge to the official history that says the Jewish community faced possible annihilation on
the eve of the 1948 war. Archival documents expose a fragmented Arab world wrought by
dismay and confusion and a Palestinian community that possessed no military ability with which
to frighten the Jews...
Israel's responsibility for Refugees - The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of
mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from
rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some
cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the case in Lydda,
Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa'sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also was accompanied by
rape, looting and confiscation [of Palestinian land and property]...
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The Myth of Arab Intransigence - [The U.N.] convened a peace conference in Lausanne,
Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the conference, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a
resolution that in effect replaced the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution,
Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte's triangular basis
for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all the refugees to their homes, the
internationalization of Jerusalem, and the partitioning of Palestine into two states. This time,
several Arab states and various representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for
negotiations, as did the United States, which was running the show at Lausanne...Prime Minister
David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace negotiations along these lines...The only reason
he was willing to allow Israel to participate in the peace conference was his fear of an angry
American reaction...The road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not Arab, intransigence.
Conclusions - The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what their research reveals as past
evils...There was a high price exacted in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were
victims, the plight of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine." Israeli historian, Ilan
Pappe in "The Link", January, 1998.
"It is no longer my country"
"For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I can't bear to see it anymore, the
injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the Beduins. All kinds of scum coming from America and
as soon as they get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their
own...I can't do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell without
me." Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement
periodical, "The Other Israel", August 1998.
The effect of Zionism on American Jews.
"The corruption of Judaism, as a religion of universal values, through its politicization by
Zionism and by the replacement of dedication to Israel for dedication to God and the moral law,
is what has alienated so many young Americans who, searching for spiritual meaning in life,
have found little in the organized Jewish community." Allan Brownfield, "Issues of the American
Council for Judaism", Spring 1997.
Zionism and the Holocaust
The U.N. decisions to partition Palestine and then to grant admission to the state of Israel were
made, on one level, as an emotional response to the horrors of the Holocaust, Under more normal
circumstances, the compelling claims to sovereignty of the Arab majority would have prevailed.
This reaction of guilt on the part of the Western allies was understandable, but that doesn't mean
the Palestinians should have to pay for crimes committed by others -- a classic example of two
wrongs not making a right.
The Holocaust is often used as the final argument in favor of Zionism, but is this connection
justified? There are several aspects to consider in answering that question honestly. First, we will
examine the historical record of what the Zionist movement actually did to help save European
Jewry from the Nazis.
Shamir proposes an alliance with the Nazis
"As late as 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to
become a prime minister of Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent
organization, the Irgun(NMO)..[The proposal stated:] 'The establishment of the historical Jewish
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state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be
in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East....The
NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side'...The Nazis rejected
this proposal for an alliance because, it is reported, they considered LEHI's military power
'negligible.' " Allan Brownfield in "The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs",
July/August 1998.
Wasn't the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust?
"In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims
of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of
Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine." John Quigley, "Palestine
and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency's Executive on June 26, 1938] that the
Zionist thing to do 'is belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide
nothing...We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large
sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our
collection efforts'...Ben-Gurion's statement at the same meeting: 'No rationalization can turn the
conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage
as far as possible.'" Israeli author Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"[Ben-Gurion stated] 'If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by
transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would
choose the second - because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical
reckoning of the Jewish people.' In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion
commented that 'the human conscience' might bring various countries to open their doors to
Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: 'Zionism is in danger.'"
Israeli historian, Tom Segev, "The Seventh Million."
Main goal of Zionism-continued
"Even David Ben-Gurion's sympathetic biographer acknowledges that Ben-Gurion did nothing
practical for rescue, devoting his energies to post-war prospects. He delegated rescue work to
Yitzak Gruenbaum, who [stated]...'They will say that I am anti-Semitic, that I don't want to save
the Exile, that I don't have a varm Yiddish hartz...Let them say what they want. I will not demand
that the Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or 100,000 pounds sterling to help European
Jewry. And I think that whoever demands such things is performing an anti-Zionist act.'
"Zionists in America...took the same position. At a May 1943 meeting of the American
Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, Nahum Goldmann argued, 'If a drive is opened
against the White Paper (the British policy of restricting Jewish immigrants to Palestine) the
mass meetings of protest against the murder of European Jewry will have to be dropped. We do
not have sufficient manpower for both campaigns.'" Peter Novick, "The Holocaust in American
Life."
Main goal of Zionism - continued
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"The Zionist movement...interfered with and hindered other organizations, Jewish and non-
Jewish, whenever it imagined that their activity, political or humanitarian, was at variance with
Zionist aims or in competition with them, even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when
it was a question of life and death...Beit Zvi documents the Zionist leadership's indifference to
saving Jews from the Nazi menace except in cases in which the Jews could be brought to
Palestine...[e.g.] the readiness of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, to
absorb one hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of this idea - as well as others, like
proposals to settle the Jews inAlaska and the Philippines - by the Zionist movement...
"The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European Jewry did not prevent it,
of course, from later hurling accusations against the whole world for its indifference toward the
Jewish catastrophe or from pressing material, political, and moral demands on the world because
of that indifference." Israeli author Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
Main goal of Zionism - continued
"I have already gone exhaustively into the reason for our being here, reasons that I as a pioneer
of 1906 can affirm have nothing to do with the Nazis!...We are here because the land is ours.
And we are here because we have again made it ours in this time with the work we have put into
it. Nazism and our history of martyrdom abroad do not concern our presence in Israel directly."
David Ben-Gurion, "Memoirs."
In hindsight, it is easy to say that the millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust could
have been saved if Palestine had been available for unlimited immigration. The history of this
period is not so simple, however. First, keep in mind that other realistic resettlement plans were
proposed but actively opposed by the Zionist movement. Second, the great majority of Jews in
Europe were not Zionists and did not try to emigrate to Palestine before 1939. Third, after the
start of the war, as the Nazis occupied various countries, they refused to let the Jews leave,
making emigration virtually impossible. And Palestine, as we have shown, was already
occupied; the indigenous Arabs had more valid reasons than any other country for wanting to
limit Jewish immigration. Read on:
Emigration to Palestine before World War II
"In 1936, the Social Democratic Bund won a sweeping victory in Jewish kehilla elections in
Poland...Its main hallmarks included 'an unyielding hostility to Zionism' and to the Zionist
enterprise of Jewish emigration from Poland to Palestine. The Bund wished Polish Jews to fight
anti-semitism in Poland by remaining there...The Zionist goal was also opposed, as a matter of
principle, by all the major parties and movements among pre-1939 Polish Jewry..."Elsewhere in
eastern Europe...Zionist strength was weaker still." Prof. William Rubinstein, "The Myth
ofRescue."
Emigration to Palestine before World War II - continued
"In fact, Zionism suffered its own defeat in the Holocaust; as a movement, it failed. It had not,
after all, persuaded the majority of Jews to leave Europe for Palestine while it was still possible
to do so." Israeli historian, Tom Segev, "The Seventh Million."
Emigration during World War II
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"[With the start of the war, Nazi] edicts forbidding emigration followed in all countries under
direct Nazi control: after 1940-1 it was in effect impossible for Jews legally to emigrate from
Nazi-occupied Europe to places of safety...The doors...were firmly shut: by the Nazis, it must be
emphasized." Prof William D. Rubinstein, "The Myth of Rescue.
Palestine was not necessarily a safe haven either
"In September 1940, the Italians, at war with Britain, bombed downtown Tel Aviv, with over a
hundred casualties...As the German Army overran Europe and North Africa, it appeared possible
that it would conquer Palestine as well. In the summer of 1940, in the spring of 1941, and again
in the fall of 1942 the danger seemed imminent. The yishuv panicked...Many people tried to find
a way out of the country, but it was not easy...Some...were taking no chances; they carried
cyanide capsules." Israeli historian, Tom Segev, "The Seventh Million."
In any case, Palestine was not Britain's to give away; it was already occupied.
"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a
Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here...Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab
villages...There is not a single community in the country that did not have a former Arab
population." Israeli leader, Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's "Original Sins."
Already occupied, continued
"One can imagine an argument for the right of a persecuted minority to find refuge in another
country able to accommodate it; one is hard-pressed, however, to imagine an argument for the
right of a peaceful minority to politically and perhaps physically displace the indigenous
population of another country. Yet...the latter was the actual intention of the Zionist movement."
Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
The use of the Holocaust for political gain
"[In 1947] the U.N. appointed a special body, the United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine (UNSCOP), to make the decision over Palestine and UNSCOP members were asked to
visit the camps of Holocaust survivors. Many of these survivors wanted to emigrate to the United
States, a wish that undermined the Zionist claims that the fate of European Jewry was connected
to that of the Jewish community in Palestine. When UNSCOP representatives arrived at the
camps, they were unaware that backstage manipulations were limiting their contacts solely to
survivors who wished to emigrate to Palestine," Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link,"
January March 1998.
Political gain - continued
"Inside the DP camps, emissaries from the Yishuv organized survivor activity - crucially, the
testimony the DPs gave to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and the UN Special
Committee on Palestine about where they wished to go...The Jewish Agency envoys reported
home that they had been successful in preventing the appearance of 'undesirable' witnesses at the
hearings. One wrote his girlfiend in Palestine that 'we have to change our style and handwriting
constantly so that they will think that the questionaires were filled in by the refugees.'"Peter
Novick, "The Holocaust in American Life."
Roosevelt's advisor writes on why Jewish refugees were not offered sanctuary in the U.S.
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after WWII
"What if Canada, Australia, South America, England and the United States were all to open a
door to some migration? Even today [written in 1947] it is my judgement, and I have been in
Germany since the war, that only a minority of the Jewish DP's [displaced persons] would
choose Palestine...
"[Roosevelt] proposed a world budget for the easy migration of the 500,000 beaten people of
Europe. Each nation should open its doors for some thousands of refugees...So he suggested that
during my trips for him to England during the war I sound out in a general, unofficial manner the
leaders of British public opinion, in and out of the government...The simple answer: Great
Britain will match the United States, man for man, in admissions from Europe...It seemed all
settled. With the rest of the world probably ready to give haven to 200,000, there was a sound
reason for the President to press Congress to take in at least 150,000 immigrants after the war...
"It would free us from the hypocrisy of closing our own doors while making sanctimonious
demands on the Arabs...But it did not work out...The failure of the leading Jewish organizations
to support with zeal this immigration programme may have caused the President not to push
forward with it at that time...
"I talked to many people active in Jewish organizations. I suggested the plan...I was amazed and
even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered, and then attacked me as if I were
a traitor...I think I know the reason for much of the opposition. There is a deep, genuine, often
fanatical emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement [Zionism]. Men like
Ben Hecht are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own." Jewish attorney and
friend of President Roosevelt, Morris Ernst, "So Far, So Good."
Victimology
"Jewish proponents of the 'victim' card are aware not only of its social effectiveness but of its
usefulness as a means of insuring Jewish solidarity and, hence, survival. If we were forever hated
by all and are doomed to be forever hated by all, then we'd best stick together and make the best
of it...Personally, I have never found this view of the eternally-hating gentile to have any
resemblance with reality. It seems a myth, pure and simple, and an ugly one at that.
"Is it a good means of social control? Perhaps, but at what cost? It strips the faith and history of
Jew and gentile alike of all but their months of antagonism. It wallows in evil imagery and
postulates a forever morally superior Jew, victimized by the forever morally inferior 'goy'..I have
spent most of my adult life among Hasidic Jews, almost all of whom were Holocaust survivors,
and I've heard almost nothing of the of the relentless harping on victimology and our need to
forever memorialize it...(Victimology) allows Jews to bypass their own faith and offers the
national allegiance of Holocaust/Israel in its place." Rabbi Mayer Schiller, quoted in "Issues of
the American Council for Judaism," Summer 1998.
General Considerations
Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbor states but has steadfastly refused to
negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last few years. Why?
"My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine', you demolish your right to
live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and
not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have
lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein
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Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your
ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's
homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land." Menahem Begin,
quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?"
More from the horse's mouth
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with
Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does
that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years
ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but
was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should
they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion, quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman,
former president of the World Jewish Congress.
More from the horse's mouth
"Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and
their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and
the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home." Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel"
More from the horse's mouth
"The Arabs will be our problem for a long time," Weizmann said, "It's not going to be
simple.One day they may have to leave and let us have the country. They're ten to one, but don't
we Jews have ten times their intelligence?" Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1919 at the Paris
peace conference, quoted in Ella Winter, "And Not To Yield."
The international consensus on Israel (a very small representative sampling)
"[In the early 1950s] Arab states regularly complained of the reprisals to the UN Security
Council, which routinely rejected Israel's claims of self-defense...
"In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, and it used aerial bombardment to destroy entire
camps of Palestinian Arab refugees, By these means Israel killed 20,000 persons, mostly
civilians...Israel claimed self-defense for its invasion, but the lack of PLO attacks into Israel
during the previous year made that claim dubious...The [UN] Security Council demanded 'that
Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to the internationally
recognized boundaries of Lebanon'...
"The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention's provision that certain
violations of humanitarian law are 'grave breaches' meriting criminal punishment for
perpetrators, found a number of Israel's practices during the uprising [the intifada] to constitute
'war crimes.' It included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees and their
subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition of collective punishment on
towns, villages and camps; the administrative detention of thousands of Palestinians; the
expulsion of Palestinian citizens; the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and
demolition of Palestinian houses." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
From the 1970s until the 1999 Israeli High Court decision forbidding torture during
interrogation (theoretically), hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were subjected to
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inhuman treatment in Israeli prisons.
"Israel's two main interrogation agencies in the occupied territories engage in a systematic
pattern of ill-treatment and torture - according to internationally recognized definitions of the
terms...The methods used in nearly all interrogations are prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged
sight deprivation using blindfolds or tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged maintenance of body
positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal threats and insults.
"These methods are almost always combined with some of the following abuses; confinement in
tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to temperature extremes, such as deliberately overcooled
rooms, prolonged toilet and hygiene deprivation; and degrading treatment...Beatings are far more
routine in IDF interrogations than in GSS interrogations. Sixteen of the nineteen detainees we
interviewed [detained between 1992 and 1994] reported having been assaulted in the
interrogation room. Beatings and kicks were directed at the throat, testicles, and stomach. Some
were repeatedly choked; some had their heads slammed against the walls...
"Israeli interrogations consistently use methods in combination with one another, over long
periods of time. Thus, a detainee in the custody of the General Security Service (GSS) may
spend weeks during which, except for brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny chair to which he is
painfully shackled; to a stifling, tiny cubicle in which he can barely move; to questioning
sessions in which he is beaten or violently manhandled; and then back to the chair.
"The intensive, sustained and combined use of these methods inflicts the severe mental or
physical suffering that is central to internationally accepted definitions of torture. Israel's
political leadership cannot claim ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centers.
The number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic," 1994 Human Rights Watch
report, "Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel's Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied
Territories."
The use of "force' - continued
"Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial, most Palestinian detainees
arrested for 'terrorist' offenses and tortured by the Shin Bet (General Security Services) 'have
been accused of offenses such as membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They
have also included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for raising a flag.' On a
related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted that there wasn't a single recorded case in
which the Shin Bet's use of torture was prompted by a 'ticking bomb' scenario: 'In every instance
of a Palestinian lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified its use in order to
extract a confession about something that had already happened, not about something that was
about to happen.'" Norman Finkelstein, "The Rise and Fall of Palestine."
The 1997 U.N. Commission Against Torture rules against Israel
"B'Tselem estimates---that the GSS annually interrogates between 1000-1500 Palestinians [as of
1998]. Some eighty-five percent of them - at least 850 persons a year - are tortured during
interrogation...
"The U.N. Committee Against Torture,..reached an unequivocal conclusion:...'The methods of
interrogation [used in Israeli prisons]...are in the Committee's view breaches of article 16 and
also constitute torture as defined in article 1 of the Convention...As a State Party to the
Convention Against Torture, Israel is precluded from raising before this Committee exceptional
circumstances'...The prohibition on torture is, therefore, absolute, and no 'exceptional'
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circumstances may justify derogating from it." 1998 Report from B'Teslem, The Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "Routine Torture:
Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service."
Some arguments used to justify Zionism
"There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for relief from Jewish
suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to
be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and
victimization of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the need
for justification...
[E.g., the inheritance claim] The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its
status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in
the same way. It does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,]
Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago!...
[Jewish suffering as justification] It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of
persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the
historical oppressors of the Jews.
They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan
holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military
might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge....
[Anti-semitism as justification] Unlike the situation of Jews persecuted for being Jews, Israelis
are at war with the Arab world because they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because
of their Jewish identity...
[The law of the jungle justification.] Presenting the world as naturally unjust, and oppression as
nature's way, has always been the first refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The
need to justify Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli world
view...In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis have become famous...
[The effect on Israelis] Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is the curse of the original sin
against the native Arabs. How can Israel be discussed without recalling the dispossession and
exclusion of non-Jews? This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli
reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis; it marks everything
and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the blood and marks every moment of existence."
Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahami, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism
and Israel."
Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine
"Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine was neither historical nor a right. It was not historical
inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two
millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic 'mysticism' of
'blood and soil' and the Romantic 'cult' of 'death, heroes and graves'... "The claim of Jewish
'homelessness is founded on a cluster of assumptions that both negates the liberal idea of
citizenship and duplicates the anti-Semitic one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic
nation. In a word, the Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid as the anti-Semitic case for an
ethnic state that marginalizes Jews." Professor Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the
Israel-Palestine Conflict,"
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How about the Zionist argument that Jordan already is the Palestinian state?
"It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier 'territorial compromise', namely in 1922,
when Transjordan was excised from the promised 'national home for the Jewish people,'...a
decision that is difficult to criticize in light of the fact that 'the number of Jews living there
permanently in 1921 has reliably been estimated at two, or according to some authorities, three
persons.'" Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Why doesn't Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East," have a constitution?
"The abstention from formulating a constitution was no accident. The massive expropriation of
lands and other properties from those Arabs who fled the country as a result of the War of
Independence and of those who remained but were declared absent, as well as the confiscation of
large tracts of land from Arab villages who did not flee, and the laws passed to legalize those
acts - all this would have necessarily been declared unconstitutional, null and void, by the
Supreme Court, being expressly discriminatory against one part of the citizenry, whereas a
democratic constitution obliges the state to treat all of its citizens equally." Israeli author, Boas
Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
"The only democracy in the Middle East?" - continued
"The 1989 Israel High Court decision that any political party advocating full equality between
Arab and Jew can be barred from fielding candidates in an election...[means] that the Israeli state
is the state of the Jews...not their [the Arabs'] state." Professor Norman Finkelstein, "Image and
Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel
The fundamentalist wing of the Jewish religion, while certainly not representative of Judaism as
a whole, is influential in Israel, and is the ideological basis of the settler movement in the West
Bank and Gaza (except for "Greater Jerusalem" where many secular Jews have moved because
of cheap, subsidized housing) The following quotes show the racism inherent in this world-view
and why its influence should be opposed by all rational people.
Ideological basis of racism in Israel
"The Talmud states that...two contrary types of souls exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from the
Satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness...Rabbi Kook, the Elder, the revered
father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism said, "The difference between a
Jewish soul and the souls of non-Jews...is greater and deeper than the difference between a
human soul and the souls of cattle.' "Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's "Jewish
Fundamentalism in Israel"
Racism - continued
"Gush Emunim rabbis have continually reiterated that Jews who killed Arabs should not be
punished, [e.g.]...Relying on the Code of Maimonides and the Halacha, Rabbi Ariel stated, 'A
Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from human judgement and has not violated the [religious]
prohibition of murder'..The significance here is most striking when the broad support, both direct
and indirect, for Gush Emunim is considered. About one-half of Israel's Jewish population
supports Gush Emunim." "Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's "Jewish Fundamentalism in
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Israel"
Jewish fundamentalist rationale for seizing Arab land
"They argue that what appears to be confiscation of Arab owned land for subsequent settlement
by Jews is in reality not an act of stealing but one of sanctification. From their perspective the
land is being redeemed by being transferred from the satanic to the divine sphere...To further this
process, the use of force is permitted whenever necessary...Halacha permits Jews to rob non-
Jews in those locales wherein Jews are stronger than non-Jews." "Israel Shahak and Norton
Mezvinsky's "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel"
Intifada 2000 and The "Peace Process"
The flaws of the Oslo Accords
"The United States has been a terrible 'sponsor' of the peace process. It has succumbed to Israeli
pressure on everything, abandoning the principle of land for peace (no U.N. Resolution says
anything about returning a tiny percentage, as opposed to all of the land Israel seized in 1967),
pushing the lifeless Palestinian leadership into deeper and deeper holes to suit Netanyahu's
preposterous demands.
"The fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they were before the Oslo process
began. Their annual income is less than half of what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel
from place to place; more of their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist;
and Jerusalem is practically lost...
"Every house demolishment, every expropriated dunum, every arrest and torture, every
barricade, every closure, every gesture of arrogance and intended humiliation simply revives the
past and reenacts Israel's offenses against the Palestinian spirit, land, body politic. To speak
about peace in such a context is to try to reconcile the irreconcilable."Edward Said in "The
Progressive", March 1998
The roots of Intifada 2000
"The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end to the charade begun at Oslo
seven years ago and labelled the 'peace process.' In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of
people around the world, were led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and
Gaza within five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an independent state.
Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel's withdrawal and come to an agreement
on the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.
"Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere and the Palestinians'
hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless of which government was in power, quibbled
over wording, demanded revisions of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide
by the new agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian
homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing, and seizing
Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway network built after 1993 on
confiscated Palestinian land isolates Palestinian towns and villages from one another and from
Jerusalem, forcing many Palestinians to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next
town...
"According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded at
Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the
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opportunity for peace by rejecting Barak's offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed
by Clinton, wanted assurance of Israel's continued strategic control over the West Bank and
Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel retain permanent sovereignty over
most of East Jerusalem, including Haram Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.
"As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods in several Palestinian cities,
destroying entire city blocks and causing scores of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded
Palestinian towns with their guns turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the
Green Line rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting
"Death of Arabs'...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against Palestinian stone throwers
failed to restrain the Israelis and instead fired at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs
were killed.
"The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by years of daily abuse and
humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September 6, a group of Israeli border police stopped
three Palestinian workers as they were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all,
subjected them to 40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 19
that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their heads against a stone wall, forced them
to swallow their own blood, and cursed their mothers and sisters. The incident only came to light
because the policemen took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by
the hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers said such beatings are a common
occurance, but they are seldom reported." Rachelle Marshall, "The Peace Process Ends in
Protests and Blood", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000.
"Israel has failed the test"
"In the Oslo Agreements, Israel and the West put Palestinian leadership to a test: In exchange for
an Israeli promise to gradually dismantle the mechanisms of the occupation in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian leadership promised to stop every act of violence and terror
immediately. For that purpose, all the apparatus for security coordination was created, more and
more Palestinian jails were built, and demonstrators were barred from approaching the [Jewish]
settlements.
"The two sides agreed on a period of five years for completion of the new deployment and the
negotiations on a final agreement. The Palestinian leadership agreed again and again to extend its
trial period...From their perspective, Israel was also put to a test: Was Israel really giving up its
attitude of superiority and domination, built up in order to keep the Palestinian people under its
control?
"More than seven years have gone by and Israel has security and administrative control of 61.2%
of the West Bank and about 20% of the Gaza Strip and security control over another 26.8% of
the West Bank. This control is what has enabled Israel to double the number of settlers in 10
years..and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass roads
meant for Jews only...
"Israel has failed the test. Palestinians control of 12% of the West Bank does not mean that Israel
has given up its attitude of superiority and domination...The bloodbath that has been going on for
three weeks is the natural outcome of seven years of [Israeli] lying and deception." Israeli
journalist Amira Hass, "Israel Has Failed The Test," in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, 10/18/00.
Jimmy Carter's simple statement of the facts - November 2000
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"An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East
persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to 'create facts' by building settlements in occupied
territory...
"At Camp David in September 1978...the bilateral provisions led to a comprehensive and lasting
treaty between Egypt and Israel, made possible at the last minute by Israel's agreement to remove
its settlers from the Sinai. But similar constraints concerning the status of the West Bank and
Gaza have not been honored, and have led to continuing confrontation and violence...
"[Concerning UN Resolution 242] Our government's legal commitment to support this well-
balanced resolution has not changed...It was clear that Israeli settlements in the occupied
territories were a direct violation of this agreement and were, according to the long-stated
American position, both 'illegal and an obstacle to peace.' Accordingly, Prime Minister Begin
pledged that there would be no establishment of new settlements until after the final peace
negotiations were completed. But later, under Likud pressure, he declined to honor this
commitment...
"It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel insists on its settlement policy,
illegal under international laws that are supported by the United States and all other nations.
"There are many questions as we contine to seek an end to violence in the Middle East, but there
is no way to escape the vital one: Land or peace?" Former President Jimmy Carter in The
Washington Post, November 26, 2000.
Oslo and Intifada 2000 - continued
"After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak
announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region. During these weeks, over 100
Palestinians were killed, including 30 children, often by 'excessive use of lethal force in
circumstances in which neither the lives of security forces nor others were in immminent danger,
resulting in unlawful killings,' Amnesty International concluded in a detailed report that was
scarcely mentioned in the US.
"Barak's plan...ensure(s) that useable land and resources (primarily water) remain largely in
Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority
(PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several
varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the
most obvious analagoue...
"It is important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the
support of the U.S. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the
basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then
pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the
'Oslo process.' Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the US., it takles a
little work to discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded," Noam
Chomsky, "Al-Aqsa Intifada", October 2000, on Znet, www.lbbs.org/meastwatch.
America - An impartial mediator?
"America's credibility as mediator had long been questioned by Palestinians, and with reason.
'The Palestinians always complain that we know the details of every proposal from the
Americans before they do,' one Israeli government source told The Independent recently. 'There's
good reason for that: we write them.'" Phil Reeves in "The Independent" (U.K.), 10/9/2000
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Lockstep U.S. Media tell (some of) the facts but not the truth
"Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe that the United States is
part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor, in the first half of October, was there much media
analysis of the fact that the violence overwhelmingly struck at the Palestinian people.
"Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed by heavily armed men in
uniform - often described by CNN and other news outlets as 'Israeli security forces'. Under the
circumstances, it's a notably benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors.
"As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard a single American news
account describing them as 'pro democracy demonstrators.' Yet that would be an appropriate way
to refer to people who - after more than three decades of living under occupation - are in the
streets to demand self determination.
"While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior firepower, do most of the
killing...American news stories highlighted the specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister
Ehud Barak as he demanded that Palestinians end the violence - while uniformed Israelis under
his authority continue to kill them...
"Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I'm apalled by what Israel is doing with U.S. Tax
dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get along, they diminish the humanity of us all."
Norman Solomon, "Media Spin Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation," from FAIR's Media
Beat, October 14, 2000.
Intifada 2000 - An overview
"There is, in the final analysis, only one way to 'stop the violence,' and that is to end the
occupation. The desire for liberation will, eventually, always bring an occupied people out into
the streets, stones in hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death
than live in bondage. This is not extreme nation.0 racism or religious fervor. It is the need to be
free...
"[Occupation] means a reality of unending violence. It means being surrounded by an abusive
foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land
that is then given to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked
by Jewish only roads; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down on a
regular basis. It means living in a massive prison...
"Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict. The plan is articulated in
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets up a two-part 'land for peace' solution. Part
one holds that Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Part two calls for all
states in the region to live in peace and security in those borders. The Israeli obligation,
withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly unfulfilled." Hussein Ibish, communications
director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, in the Los Angeles Times,
October 18, 2000.
Albright stands the facts on their heads
"With the same deadpan, expressionless, emotionless, glazed look, Madam Albright repeated:
'Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel undeer siege,' adding that the Israeli army is
defending itself...[But] It is Israel that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine (and not the other
way around) Israeli tanks and armored vehicles are surrounding Palestinian villages, camps and
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cities (and not the other way around). Israeli (American-made) Apache gunships are firing Lau
and other missiles at Palestinian protestors and homes (and not the other way around). It is Israel
that is confiscating Palestinian land and importing Jewish settlers to set up illegal armed
settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory (and not the other way around). The settlers on the
rampage in the West Bank and Israelis terrorizing Palestinians in their own homes (and not the
other way around)...Israel is committing atrocities against the Palestinians with total impunity,
and yet you maintain, 'Israel is beseiged.'" Hanan Ashrawi, in "The Progressive", December
2000
What Arafat was offered
"In American coverage of the recent Camp David meetings, the American press obediently
followed the Israeli and US government spin that while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made
courageous concessions for peace, Palestinian unwillingness to compromise caused the meeting
to fail.
"Never mind that Barak's 'courageous concessions' consisted of allowing the Palestinians to have
joint administrative responsibility over a couple of remote Arab neighborhoods of Arab East
Jerusalem - pathetic crumbs tossed on the floor which Arafat was expected to gratefully pick
up." American Jewish reporter, Eduardo Cohen, from "What Americans Need to Know - But
Probably Won't Be Told - To understand Palestinian Rage" from Palestine Media Watch,
www.pmwatch.org
What Arafat was offered - continued
"Barak appears to be asking for only 10% of the occupied territories. In reality, it's closer to
30%, taking into account the territories he wants to annex in the Jerusalem area and place under
his "security control" in the Jordan Valley. But even worse, in the map submitted to the
Palestinians, these percentage points cut the country up from East to West and from North to
South, so that the Palestinian state will consist of groups of islands, each surrounded by Israeli
settlers and soldiers.
"World opinion is always on the side of the underdog. In this fight, we are Goliath and they are
David. In the eyes of the world [outside the US], the Palestinians are fighting a war of liberation
against a foreign occupation. We are in their territory, not they on ours. We are the occupiers,
they are the victims. This is the objective situation, and no minister of propaganda can change
that." Israeli peace activist. Uri Avnery, "12 Conventional Lies About the Palestine-Israeli
Conflict" from Palestine Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org.
An Israeli's "Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now"
"It has been seven years exactly since I wrote my last letter to you.It was the day after the
signing of the Oslo Accords, when you invited me to dance with you in Menorah Square...Permit
me to quote for you a few passages from that old letter.
"'You danced in the square because you were happy about this peace. Not just plain peace, but a
blend of peace,security, Palestinian chest-beating over sins committed (renunciation of
terrorism), and far-reaching concessions by the other side. A peace that you can be proud of. A
peace - so you boast - for which we are giving nothing ("Just a tiny bit," whispers the prime
minister) and gaining much; recognition, greater security, a halt to the Intifada, renunciation of
terrorism, being relieved of the Arabs and more. You are happy about this peace, and in its honor
you invite me to dance with you. No thank you...You got rid of Gaza, you separated Israelis from
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Palestinians, you gave them the dirty work and you didn't even promise withdrawal or a real
state. Could peace possibly be bought more cheaply?"
"'I, by contrast, see peace as an end and not merely as a means, and call for getting out of the
Occupied Territories because we have nothing to be there for, even if the occupation did not cost
us even one victim or one cent; and I am against shooting children - and adults - simply because
it is forbidden to shoot children or ordionary civilians.'
"Since the writing of these lines you celebrated the peace and you became fat and prosperous.
The repeated and varied violations of the agreements did not move you, not to speak of any
change in our culture of war and occupation, the arrogant tone of those negotiating in our name
and their attempts to demand more and more in exchange for less and less...
"What is there to be confused about? A conquering army is using tanks and helicopter gunships
to disperse demonstrations. What is so hard to understand here?...There is an occupation and
there is a struggle against the occupation. There are demonstrators and there is an army that has
received orders to shed their blood. And don't come to me with the story of the rifles, Your
glorious war record qualifies you to understand that even CNN reporters understand, that those
rifles do not endanger either Israel or the soldiers if they don't get too close...
"[From 1993 letter]"peace is a tango that takes two equal partners dancing in unity; it is not a
dance of one who drags around his partner at will...In your dance of peace you have no partners,
only enemies. For your peace is his occupation, your success is his loss...Peace is still far away
because peace demands honesty, because peace demands equality. You want to force them to lie,
you want of them a peace of surrender, you are celebrating a peace of master and slave. Under
such conditions there will perhaps be peace-and-quiet, but Peace, no. Not until you open your
eyes and your heart. Not until we are ready for a peace of partnership and equality." Michael
(Mikado) Warschawski, "The Party Is Over: An Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now,", from
Znet, www.lbbs.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
"Barak promised peace and brought war, and not by accident."
"(Barak) promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While speaking about peace, he
enlarged the settlements. Cut the Palestinian territories into pieces by 'by-pass' roads.
Confiscated lands. Demolished homes. Uprooted trees. Paralyzed the Palestinian
economy..Conducted negotiations in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that
amounts to capitulation. Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting the Green Line, the
Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic homeland. Demanded the annexation of
'settlement blocs" and pretended that they amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he
meant more than 20% would remain under Israeli control. Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to
accept a 'state' cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several enclaves isolated from each
other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers...Boasts publicly that he has not given back
to the Palestinians one inch of territory...When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot, in
cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults and children. Blockaded
each village and town separately, bringing them to the verge of starvation, in order to get them to
surrender. Bombarded neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style 'liquidations', causing an
inevitable escalation of the violence." Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, February 3, 2001,
www.gush-shalom.org
A 'benign' occupation?
"Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running an 'enlightened' or 'benign'
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occupation, qualitatively different from other military occupations the world has seen. The truth
was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and
fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation,
humiliation and manipulation." Israeli historian, Benny Morris, "Righteous Victims."
What "closure" means
"Just an hour's drive from Jerusalem, a cruel drama has been underway for the past five months,
the likes of which have not been seen since the early days of the Israeli occupation, but the
majority of Israelis are taking absolutely no interest in it. The iron grip of the closure in its new
format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people, yet no one is saying a word.
"It has to be said starkly and simply: There has never been a closure like this there, in the land of
barriers and closure. In the worst of times of the previous Intifada, when the iDF was in eveÃ???r
and curfew reigned supreme, there was not a situation in which a whole people was jailed
without a trial and without the right of appeal.
"Israel has split the West Bank by means of hundreds of trenches, dirt ramparts and concrete
cubes which have been placed at the entrance to most of the towns and villages. No one enters
and no one leaves, not those who are pregnant and not those who are dying. There isn't even a
soldier with whom one can plead and beg. A network of bizarre Burma roads that break through
the encirclement are sending an entire people along muddy, rocky routes, with the situation
aggravated by a substantial risk of getting caught or getting shot by soldiers who often open fire
on the desperate travelers. . .
"Never before has there been distress and suffering on this scale among the Palestinians in the
territories. They will engender unprecendented despair and ultimately they will spark violence
more cruel and painful than anything seen so far. . . This is the point: the horrific distress of the
Palestinians because of the present closure will quickly turn into the distress of the Israelis. . .
The current siege, a shamefully appalling operation, must be lifted quickly. This must not be
made conditional on the cessation of the violence, because the siege itself is the most effective
spur to violence." Israeli writer, Gideon Levy, in Ha aretz, March 4, 2001
Views Of The Future
A future free of ethnocentrism
"The first challenge, then, is to extract acknowledgement from Israel for what it did to us...But
then, I believe, we must also hold out the possibility of some form of coexistence in which a new
and better life, free of ethnocentrism and religious intolerance, could be available...If we present
our claims about the past as ushering in a form of mutuality and coexistence in the future, a long-
term positive echo on the Israeli and Western side will reverberate."Edward Said in "The
Progressive", March 1998
The answer? A sovereign Palestinian state.
"The final destination of a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement has begun to emerge from the
political haze. Such a settlement must...give the Palestinian people a sovereign, uncontested,
independent state of their own. This is a matter of justice and practicality. If a truly lasting and
stable peace is the goal, there is no other option...The mere trappings of statehood will not
suffice. The state has to be real and workable. The following are its essential conditions.
Territorial integrity and contiguity...Any further dissection of Palestinian territory would make it
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politically and economically impossible to maintain a state...There can be no civilian pockets
under Israeli rule on Palestinian land...
A sovereign capital in Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is Palestine's historical, spiritual and
commercial heart. To exclude it from a Palestinian state is unthinkable...
"Justice and fairness for refugees...As a matter of principle, the Palestinians right to return or be
compensated for their lost homes and land is nonnegotiable...Israel must acknowledge the
suffering and hardship Palestinian refugees have faced as a result of their eviction from their
homeland, and must assist in their rehabilitation and reabsorption." A.S. Khalidi, Op-Ed piece in
the New York Times, February 11, 1997.
Palestinian refugees claim to repatriation is realistic, as well as just
Palestinian engineer and parliamentarian Salman Abu Sitta...(showed) that 'the return of the
refugees is possible with no appreciable dislocation of Jewish residents.' This is because '78
percent of the Jewish population of Israel lives on only 15 percent of the land'...
"Ironically, the land in the upper Galilee from which a very large percentage of the refugees were
driven is so lightly populated because most of the immigrants [that] settled there refused to
remain so far from the centers of Israeli urban life in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem...Of those
actually cultivating those former Palestinian fields, many are non-Jewish Thais, Rumanians and
others slated to return to their countries at the end of their contracts." Richard Curtiss from June
2000 issue of "Washington Report On Middle East Affairs."
Israeli professor calls for a new Zionism
"It was our nationalism...which drew the country into an occupation and settlement of the West
Bank...None of the leaders of the Labor movement believed that the Palestinians deserved the
same right [as Jews] because none of them believed in universal rights. Pretending, like [Arthur]
Hertzberg and others do, that the Occupation and the colonial situation created in the last thirty
years was merely the product of the Arab refusal to recognize Israel, is no more than looking for
an alibi and falsifying history...
"The time has come to say that if the settlements in Judea and Samaria or in the very heart of
Hebron are the natural, logical and legitimate continuation of the original intention of Zionism,
then we need another Zionism. If a 'Jewish State' that does not recognize the absolute equality of
all human beings is considered to be closer to the spirit of the founding fathers than a new liberal
Zionism, then it is time to say good-bye to the ghosts of the founders, and to start forging for
ourselves an identity detached from the mystical ramifications of our religion and the irrational
side of our history." Israeli professor of political science, Ze'ev Sternhell, in "Tikkun" May 1998.
Sources for further research on Palestine and Israel
These short quotes do not, of course, prove the assertions made here. The historical evidence,
however, is overwhelming and is available in fully documented form in the books cited.
Particularly useful sources are:
1. "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice" by John Quigley, professor of law at Ohio State
University. Duke University Press, 1990.
2. "The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians" by Noam Chomsky,
professor at MIT and "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (NY Times). South End
Press, 1983.
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3."Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel" by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi.
An honest history of Zionism by a noted Israeli scholar who teaches at Haifa University. Olive
Branch Press, 1993.
4. "Bitter Harvest" by Sami Hadawi. A very complete look at the documentary evidence of the
creation of the state of Israel, by a Palestinian Christian who lived through that period. Caravan
Books, 1979
CONCLUSION I
For Jewish Readers
As we have seen, the root cause of the Palestine-Israel conflict is clear. During the 1948 war,
750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and
turned into refugees. The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either destroyed
their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal
possessions for the use of the Jewish population. This was the birth of the state of Israel.
We know it is hard to accept emotionally, but in this case the Jewish people are in the wrong.We
took most of Palestine by force from the Arabs and blamed the victims for resisting their
dispossession. If you run into someone's car, for whatever reason, simple justice demands that
you repair it. Our moral obligation to the Palestinian people is no less clear. It is time for all
Jewish people of good conscience to make whatever amends are possible to the Palestinians in
order to live up to the best part of the Jewish tradition - its ethical and moral basis.
Any criticism of Israel is traditionally seen by American Jews as harmful to the Jewish people,
even if the criticism is true. But "my people, right or wrong, my people" is no different than "my
country, right or wrong, my country". Once we start down the slippery slope where the ends
justify the means we have left behind any claim to morality. Along with millions of other
American Jews unaffiliated with the major U.S. Jewish organizations, we are outraged at the
Israeli government's ongoing oppression of the Palestinians and feel that it has been the ruination
of the high moral standing of the Jewish people.
The Israeli government could solve the Palestine/Israel crisis tomorrow. It actually would be in
the best interests of its citizens to do so because random acts of terrorism against Israelis would
cease if Palestinian demands for a viable, independent state were accepted and compensation for
Arab losses made.
Here in America, we Jews are thoroughly assimilated into the mainstream of society and hold
positions of power and influence in every field of endeavor. We do not need to be in a defensive
mood anymore. We can afford to change out attitude from "is it good the the Jews?" to "Is it
good?" At the very least, American Jews need to categorically state that we cannot condone
Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the intentional murder and crippling of
Palestinian protestors armed only with rocks, as documented in reports by the UN Security
Council, the UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,
Israeli groups like B'Tselem, etc.
According to a survey commissioned by the five largest American Jewish organizations, but
suppressed by them afterwards, 20% of American Jews support Palestinian demands and 35%
say that Jerusalem should be shared. This, in the face of a near-total blackout of the Palestinian
position in our press, is very impressive. Join this growing segment of American Jews by
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contacting Not In My Name, at www.nimn.org, a group that is spearheading a coalition of
Jewish groups to protest the Israeli occupation.
Israel's long-term interests can best be served by supporting Israeli peace groups, like Gush
Shalom (www.gush.shalom.org), not the Israeli government and its brutal repression, which just
leads to endless violence. Israeli peace groups rightfully criticize their government and we
should too, since they claim to act in our name. American groups like the Jewish Peace Lobby,
Jewish Voice For Peace and the Middle East Children's Alliance also deserve your support. Don't
compromise yout ethics in blind support of bad politics--work for a just soultion instead.
Please write for more free copies of this booklet to the address on the back page and ask your
Jewish friends to consider the information presented here. For everyone's sake. Peace.
CONCLUSION II
We hope that this look at the historical record concerning the root cause of the Middle East
conflict will give second thoughts to all who have previously supported Israel's actions.
The persecution of the Jews for centuries in Europe was the worst of many stains on the
European record, and the Zionists' desire for a place of sanctuary is certainly understandable.
Like all other colonial enterprises, however, Zionism was based on the total disregard of the
rights of indigenous inhabitants. As such, it is morally indefensible. And, as previously stated, all
subsequent crimes - and there have been many on both sides - inevitably follow from this
original injustice to the Palestinians.
Given the damage that has been done to the Palestinian people, Israel's obligation is to make
whatever amends possible. Among these should be assisting the creation of a sovereign
Palestinian state in the entire West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel
should not object to this state and, in addition, should help with its foundation via generous
reparations. Besides being the right thing to do, this would stop the sporadic acts of violence
against Israel, as the Palestinians' legitimate desire for their own state would be realized.
Moreover, all laws that discriminate against non-Jews living in Israel should be repealed.
Given the history outlined in this paper, we conclude that the Palestinians have gotten "the short
end of the stick" and that justice demands that wrongs should be righted. Full and complete
justice would entail allowing any Palestinian to return to Israel if they wished but, practically
speaking, we understand that this is a recipe for even more bloodshed. Therefore, recognizing
that reality, we join Gush Shalom and other Israeli peace groups in calling for a negotiated,
modified right of return with the bulk of Palestinian refugees being settled in a Palestinian state,
financed by generous reparations from both Israel and the international community.
As U.S. citizens, we have a special obligation to see that justice is done in this matter. U.S.
financial aid to Israel has been, and continues to be, enormous; and our diplomatic support is the
crucial factor allowing Israel's continued occupation of Arab territories. We strongly recommend
that you contact your elected representatives in Washington and urge them to insist that, as a
preconditon of continued support, Israel must abide by the consensus of world opinion and
withdraw to its 1967 borders, as demanded in numerous UN votes.
American Jews in particular have a special responsibility to acknowledge the Palestinian point of
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view in order to help move the debate forward. As Chomsky writes in his Peace in the Middle
East?, "In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the
Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice, whatever one may think of the
competing claims. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even
begin."
In the long run, only by admitting their culpability and making amends can Israelis live with
their neighbors in peace. Only then can the centuries-old Jewish tradition of being a people of
high moral character be restored. And only in this way can real security, peace and justice come
to this ancient land.
Jews for Justice in The Middle East
P.O. Box 14561
Berkeley CA 94712
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"ben , a right wing zionist jew proud and strong"

I'm with you Ben!! Am Yisroel Chai!!